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SEEING THE FAR WEST 



By JOHN T. PARIS 

SEEING PENNSYLVANIA 

Frontispiece in color, 1 13 illustrations in doubletone and 2 maps. 
Octavo. 

A rare and fascinating guide to an American wonderland 
which all Americans should know. 

THE ROMANCE OF 
OLD PHILADELPHIA 

Frontispiece in color and 101 illustrations in doubletone. 
Decorated cloth. Octavo. 

"A narrative sometimes purely romantic, sometimes epic, 
but always finely human . . . particularly inciting Americans 
to a broader patriotism." — Boston Trariscnpt. 



OLD ROADS 
OUT OF PHILADELPHIA 

117 illustrations and a map. Decorated cloth. 
Octavo. 

"It would be hard to find anywhere in America roads 
richer in historical interest . . . and John T. Faris has told the 
story of them well." — New York Times. 

By THEODOOR De BOOY 
and JOHN T. FARIS 

THE VIRGIN ISLANDS 
OUR NEW POSSESSIONS AND 
THE BRITISH ISLANDS 

97 illustrations and five maps especially prepared for 
this work. Octavo. 

"A new and wonderfully entertaining book of travel . . . 
an ideal book — would there were many more 'just as good.' " 

—Travel. 



SEEING TtE 
FAR WEST 

JOHN T FARIS 

TVith 113 lUustrddions eaidzMAps 




PHILADELPHIA & LONDON 

J. B.LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
1920 



■rzz 



COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



OCT -2 1920 



PRINTED BY I. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 

PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. 



©CI,A597609 

'VVO I 



FOREWORD 

THE five-year-old found her way to her father's 
desk, pushed aside the maps and manuscripts 
over which he had been poring, climbed to his 
knee, and said, ''Now tell me a story about Colorado." 

The story was told, and the request that Colorado 
be pointed out on the map was complied with. Then she 
said, "Take me to Colorado some day!" 

Another day the request was for a story about Cali- 
fornia. As before, the map was brought into play to 
satisfy childish curiosity, and the plea followed, "Take 
me to California some day. I want to see El Cap-i-tan. ' ' 

Day after day father and daughter went through 
with the program, and the ceremony was always com- 
pleted by the confident assurance that some day they 
would see together the beauty spots of which they had 
been talking. Finally, when Colorado, California, Ari- 
zona, Washing-ton, Montana, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, 
Utah, Nevada and New Mexico had been represented in 
stories, there was the final assertion, "Some day we'll 
see them all, won't we I" 

Every American should have that child's impartial 
interest in the natural wonders of the Far West and 
her determination to see not merely one or two of the 
states that present to the sightseer programs so varied 
and alluring. There will be time to have favorite spots 
for wandering when a general view has been taken of 
all the regions a bountiful Providence has so wonder- 
fully endowed. 

Having taken first the general view, there will be 



FOREWORD 

opportunity to specialize by making an exhaustive study 
of some particular aspect of the scenery of moun- 
tains or valleys, rivers or lakes, deserts or canyons. 
And what a field for specialization "Western sce- 
nery presents! 

The traveler who follows in the wake of the dis- 
coverers of the scenic glories of the states from the 
Eockies to the Pacific will find that, while the railroads 
lead to many of the best known of these, there are many 
more that are at a distance from the steel highways. 
But those who find it impossible to leave the railways 
will be able to make many memorable trips. Still 
greater joy is reserved for those who make their way 
by the splendid highways that now gridiron the West, 
and the greatest joy of all awaits those who wander 
by pack train or on foot in difficult country, camping out 
in the mountains or on the plains, crossing mysterious 
deserts or delving into hidden canyons, climbing to 
inaccessible glaciers, or penetrating to meadow-like 
valleys that are tucked away in a setting of snow- 
clad mountains. 

But take time enough! Don't think that a hurried 
trip across the Continent is sufficient, or that, by passing 
once through one of the states, vast as many a European 
nation, the section in question is really seen. One of 
the first guide-books prepared after the completion of 
the Union Pacific Eailroad gave an itinerary for sixty 
days. **I cannot tolerate the idea of less than sixty 
days," the author added. But if sixty days was a 
necessity then, how much more to-day when half a 
dozen transcontinental lines, many cross lines, and 
innumerable roads for the automobile have opened up 
points of interest not even dreamed of fifty years ago ! 

6 



FOREWORD 

Perhaps some reader may be inspired to make inde- 
pendent investigation that will bear fruit in disclosing 
some secret beauties still hidden in regions as yet not 
completely charted. For there are such regions in 
mountain and desert ; they are Avaiting for some one to 
come to them. That some one may be you ! 

More Americans need to wake up to the fact that 
in their own West is scenery that is beyond comparison. 
Travelers talk of the Fjords of Norway; but let them 
go to Hood's Canal or Lake Chelan in Washington, or 
to the lakes of Glacier National Park ! The Himalayas 
and the Andes are famous among mountaineers; but 
what of the Sierras, the Cascades, and the Eockies? 
These may not be so lofty, but they are as inspiring 
and as overwhelming. Adjectives are used exhaus- 
tively in describing the Selkirks of Canada ; but there 
are the tremendous precipices and glaciers of North- 
western Montana. Visitors take delight in the flowers 
that bloom high up in the Alps ; but where are flower- 
clad mountain meadows to compare with those of Colo- 
rado or California or Oregon or Washington? The 
Falls of the Zambesi in Africa are majestic ; but why 
lose sight of the great cascades of Wyoming and Idaho, 
of Washington and Oregon and California and Utah, 
some of these two and even three times as high as 
Niagara 1 It is not strange that travelers speak with 
admiration of the mountain highways of Europe, yet 
how many realize that in the Western States are roads 
that surpass even the superb highway on the Stelvio 
Pass? There are glorious rivers in Europe and Asia, 
but how many of these can be thought of with the Colum- 
bia? What has the Riviera to offer in scenery and 
climate that the Coast of Southern California cannot 

7 



FOREWORD 

duplicate or surpass? WTien the lure of the desert is 
spoken of, why should we persist in thinking only of 
the Sahara or the plains of Tibet 1 In the West there 
are deserts as boundless and as attractive. Then there 
are the mighty forests of the Pacific Coast, and the 
Grand Canyon of the Colorado and the Yosemite Valley 
and Yellowstone Park and Crater Lake, and how 
many other wonders that are unlike anything to be 
found elsewhere ! 

The author, while not slighting scenes already made 
delightfully familiar by many writers, has sought to 
give emphasis also to regions of which little has been 
said — among others, the great National Forests whose 
beauties were seen in the course of more than three 
thousand miles of travel far from railroads; the Na- 
tional Parks and Monuments, especially those opened in 
recent years, including Zion Canyon, that wonder of 
Southern Utah which, so far as the writer knows, but 
one recent volume has touched upon ; the deserts which 
silently and compellingly call to the traveler who hur- 
ries across them by train ; and the amazing lava-built 
regions of Central Oregon, east of the Cascades, which 
wiU be better known to Americans when there is a 
through railroad from Klamath Falls to the Columbia. 

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Mr. Charles 
Howard Shinn of North Fork, California, for invalu- 
able help, as well as to Messrs. R. F. Hammatt, T. N. 
Lorenzen, T. M. Talbott, Norman G. Jacobson, A. G. 
Jackson, M. A. Benedict, and other genial officials of 
the United States Forestry Service for companionship 
on roads in mountain and forest. 

John T. Faeis 

Phiiadelphia, Apbil, 1920 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTBR PAGE 

I. THE WALLS OF PARADISE 17 

pike's peak and beyond 

IL UNDER THE WALLS OF PARADISE 24 

IN THE pike's peak REGION 

III. ALLURING CITIES OF THE PIONEERS 30 

IV. IN NATURE'S GARDENS 45 

THE PARKS OP COLORADO 

V. IN GARDENS OF MAN'S DEVISING 56 

THE IRRIGATED LANDS OP COLORADO 

VI. ONE THOUSAND MILES THROUGH ROCKIES... 65 

Vn. THROUGH THE LAND OP FOSSILS 73 

VIII. FROM THE YELLOWSTONE TO THE GRAND 

CANYON 87 

IX. FROM THE CITY OF THE SAINTS TO ZION 

CANYON 92 

X. GOD'S AUTOGRAPH IN STONE 105 

THE GRAND CANYON OP THE COLORADO 

XI. ALONG THE WESTERN BORDER OF ARIZONA. . . Ill 

XII. THE ROMANCE OF THE SALTON SINK 115 

XIII. ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 121 

XIV. IN THE LAND OF THE DONS 138 

XV. THE ALLURING DESERT 150 

XVI. WHERE MONTANA HISTORY WAS MADE 158 

XVII. ON THE TRAIL OF LEWIS AND CLARK 170 

XVIIL "THE SUMMIT OF THE WORLD" 176 

THE STORY OP YELLOWSTONE PARK 

XIX. FROM THE YELLOWSTONE TO WALLA WALLA 181 

XX. FROM GREAT SALT LAKE TO SACRAMENTO.. 190 

XXI. FROM SAN DIEGO TO THE IMPERIAL VALLEY 202 

XXn. IN AND ABOUT LOS ANGELES 210 

9 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAQB 

XXIII. IN THE HEART OF THE SIERRAS 218 

XXIV. FROM LOS ANGELES TO SAN FRANCISCO 227 

XXV. IN THE MOUNT SHASTA COUNTRY 235 

XXVI. FROM CRATER TO CRATER IN OREGON 240 

XXVII. A MOUNTAIN DINNER AND OTHER DINNERS 248 

XXVIII. THROUGH CANYON AND GORGE TO PORTLAND 254 

XXIX. OLYMPIC WANDERINGS 262 

XXX. ON PUGET SOUND 268 

XXXI. THE JOY OF THE OPEN ROAD 272 

XXXII. ACROSS WASHINGTON'S INLAND EMPIRE .... 276 

XXXIII. WESTERN HIGHWAYS 284 

INDEX 289 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACINQ FAGB 

In Zion National Park, Utah Frontispiece 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Skiing in the Rocky Mountains 18 

Photo by Wiswall Brothers, Denver 

Pike's Peak, Colorado 19 

Photo from Denver and Rio Grande Railroad 

Williams CaSon, North of Manitou, Colorado 26 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Gateway to the Garden of the Gods 27 

Photo from Denver and Rio Grande Railroad 

Den\'er on Sunday Morning 42 

Photo by Wiswall Brothers, Denver 

Windy Point, Where Chief Colorow Watched for the Gold 

Seekers 43 

In Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado 50 

Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde National Park 51 

Photo from Denver and Rio Grande Railroad 

Rainbow Bridge, Utah 51 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

In Gunnison Canyon, Colorado 58 

Photo by United States Reclamation Service 

On Grand Lake, Colorado 59 

Photo by Mile High Photo Company, Denver 

Royal Gorge, near CaSon City, Colorado 68 

Photo by Photocraft Shop, Colorado Springs 

The Sky Line Drive, CaSon City, Colorado 69 

Photo by Photocraft Shop 

Mount op the Holy Cross, Colorado 69 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Ouray, Colorado '" 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

On Green River, Wyoming 82 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Devil's Slide, Weber Canyon, Utah 82 

Photo by Noggle Studio, Ogden, Utah 

11 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Cave Rock, near Sierra La Sal, Utah 88 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

ZiON Canyon, Utah 96 

Photo from United States Railroad Administration 

The Great White Throne, Zion Canyon, Utah 102 

Photo from Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad 

The Breaks of Cedar Canyon, Utah i03 

Photo copyright by R. D. Adams, Cedar City, Utah 

In Zion Canyon, Utah 103 

Photo from Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad 

Sandstone Cliffs, near Peach Springs, Arizona 108 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Across the Grand Canyon from Zuni Point 109 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

An Irrigating Canal 116 

Arizona Desert near Phcenix 116 

Photo by United States Reclamation Service 

Natural Bridge, North of Manuelito, Arizona 122 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Bad Lands, near Winslow, Arizona 122 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Scattered Fragments, Petrified Forest, Arizona 123 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Montezuma Castle, Arizona 123 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Sorting Cows and Calves in a New Mexico Round-up 142 

Photo by Wilfrid Smith, Roswell, New Mexico 

Supposed Remains op an Ancient Irrigation Ditch, New Mexico 146 

Photo by Wilfrid Smith, Roswell, New Mexico 

Navajo Church, near Fort Wingate, New Mexico 146 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

RtriNS OF Pecos Church, New Mexico 147 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

The Mesa Encantada, New Mexico 147 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

South Front, San Bernardino Range 152 

In the Arizona Desert 152 

Photo by United States Reclamation Service 

Arizona Desert Before Cultivation 153 

Photo by United States Reclamation Service 
12 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Thompson Falls, Montana 166 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Pobipey's Pillar, Montana 167 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Cabinet Gorge, Idaho 167 

Photo by Haynes, St. Paul 

McDermott Lake, Glacier National Park 170 

Photo by United States Reclamation Service 

On the Trail Between St. Mary's Lake and Lake McDermott, 
Glacier National Park 171 

Photo by Marble Photo Company 

View Down Flathead River from Knowles, Montana 174 

Photo by Haynes, St. Paul 

Grinnell Glacier, Glacier National Park 174 

Photo by A. J. Baker 

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, from Artist Point 176 

Photo copyright by Haynes, St. Paul 

Giant Geyser, Yellowstone Park 177 

Photo by Haynes, St. Paul 

NoRRis Geyser Basin, Yellowstone Park 178 

Photo copyright by Haynes, St. Paul 

Electric Peak, Yellowstone Park 178 

Photo by Haynes, St. Paul 

Log Slide to River, Idaho 184 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Upper Falls, Henry's Fork of Snake River, Idaho 184 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Shoshone Falls, Idaho 185 

Photo by United States Reclamation Service 

Looking Down Ogden Canyon 194 

Photo by George W. Goshen 

Palisade Canyon, Nevada 194 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Channel of Humboldt River, near Rye Patch, Nevada 195 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

On Lake Tahoe, Nevada-California 198 

Photo from Union Pacific Railroad 

On the San Diego River, California 208 

On the Road Above Cxjyamaca Lake, California 209 

Photo by R. F. Hammatt 

13 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Eltsian Park, Los Angeles 212 

Photo by Putnam and Valentine, Los Angeles 

In the San Gabriel Valley, near Riverside, California 212 

Photo from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce 

Looking North from Pasadena, California 213 

Photo by F. W. Martin, Pasadena 

Mt. Rubidoux on Easter Morning, near Riverside, California 216 

Photo by J. C. Milligan 

Central Park, Los Angeles, California 216 

Photo by Graham Photo Company, Los Angeles 

Kearney Avenue, Fresno, California 222 

Photo by C. Laval, Fresno 
MoRO Rock, Sequoia National Park, California 222 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

The General Grant Tree 223 

Near Huntingdon Lake, Californla 223 

Photo by C. Laval, Fresno 

On the Way to Huntingdon Lake 224 

Photo by C. Laval, Fresno 

Forest Fire of 1918 from Wawona Point 224 

Bridal Veil Meadow, Yosemite National Park 225 

Photo by H. C. Tibbetts, San Francisco 

Mirror Lake, Yosemite National Park 225 

AvALON Bay, Catalina Island 226 

Photo by H. C. Tibbetts, San Francisco 

On the Rugged Pacific Shore 228 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

The Pinnacles, Santa Clara County, California 228 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

A Bit of the Beach at Santa Barbara, California 229 

Cormorant Rocks near Monterey, California 230 

Photo from American Museum of Natural History, New York 

Natural Bridge on the Coast at Santa Cruz, California .... 230 

In the Santa Clara Valley, California 231 

In San Francisco 232 

Photo by H. C. Tibbetts, San Francisco 

Mount Tamalpais, California 233 

Mount Shasta, California 236 

Photo by United States Forest Service 
14 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Klamath Valley, Oregon; Mount Sttjchel in Background .... 242 

Photo by United States Reclamation Service 

Crater Lake on Mount Mazama, Oregon 243 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

North Fork of Rogue River, Oregon 246 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

White Pelicans, Klamath Lake 247 

Photo from American Museum of Natural History, New York 

Paulina Falls, near Newberry Crater, Oregon 247 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Lava Lake, the Three Sisters, and Bachelor Butte, Oregon . 252 

Photo by A. G. Jackson, United States Forest Service 

" Choose your Fish," Lake Chelan 252 

Photo by A. G. Jackson 

Columnar Basalt Cliffs 254 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

The Horseshoe, Deschutes River Canyon 255 

Photo by Winter Photo Company, Portland 

Vista House, Crown Point, Columbia River Highway 258 

Photo by Gifford and Prentiss, Portland 

Interior op Mitchell's Point Tunnels, Columbia River Highway 259 

Photo by Gifford Studio, Portland 

Willamette Valley, near Newburg, Oregon 259 

Photo by United States Geological Survey 

Portland, Oregon; Mount Hood in the Distance 260 

Photo by Gifford Studio, Portland 

Wild Elk on Hoh River, Olympic Forest 264 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Looking West on Lake Crescent, Washington 265 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Mount Rainier, from Spray Park 268 

Photo copyright, 1903, by W. P, Romans 

On the Toboggan, Paradise Park, Mount Rainier 269 

The Origin of a Glacier 270 

Photo by J. G. McCurdy, Port Townsend, Washington 

On the Trail, Washington 272 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Entrance Denny Creek Camp Ground, Snoqualmib National 
Forest 272 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

15 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Pack Train, Loaded 273 

Photo by United States Forest Service 

Getting Breakfast, Blewett Pass Highway, Washington 273 

Photo by A. G. Jackson, United States Forest Service 

Snoqualmie Falls, Washington 278 

Photo copyright, 1915, by Asahel Curtis, Seattle 

On Lake EIecheelus, Washington 280 

In Lyman Pass, Lake Chelan, Washington 280 

Photo by United States Reclamation Service 

Bridge Creek, Chelan County, Washington 281 

Photo by Frank Palmer, Spokane 

The Narrows, Spokane River, Washington 281 

Photo by Frank Palmer, Spokane 

Along the Truckee River, near Lake Tahoe, California 284 

Photo by Putnam and Valentine, Los Angeles 

Pine Canyon on the Sunset Highway 284 

Phantom Canyon Highway, CaSJon City, Colorado 285 

Roosevelt Road, Arizona 285 

Photo by United States Reclamation Service 

MAPS 

Relief Map Showing Surface Features of the Western Part 
OF the United States 16 

Courtesy of the United States Geological Survey 

National Forests op the West End 

The National Parks and National Monuments of the West. . . End 

Courtesy of the United States Geological Survey 



The illustration on the title page is of the Mission at 
Santa Barbara, California. 

The illustration on the cover is of Heart Lake, Olympic 
National Forest, Washington. 







V 



I 



I 



s\' 



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f'H' 



w;^i 



RELIEF MAP SHOWING SURFACE FEATURES OF THE WESTERN PART OF THE UNITED STATES 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

CHAPTER I 
THE WALLS OF PARADISE 

PIKE'S PEAK AND BEYOND 

Nature reveals her deepest, grandest mooda 
Within its vast unpeopled solitudes; 
And when the pu-rple night's calm mists are drifting, 
A sense of the divinej about it broods. 

And he who treads the lofty land alone. 
Will feel, while clouds are round him rent and bloAvn, 
Standing amid the dumb crags, skyward lifting, 
A little nearer God's celestial tirone. 

— CUNTON SOOIXABD. 

tcTT^LEASE don't speak! This is not for words, 
r"^ but for worship ! ' ' 

-*^ One who has the privilege of standing on the 

summit of Pike's Peak, 14,109 feet above the sea, is apt 
to feel hearty sympathy with the hero of the novelist 
who thus quieted a garrulous companion. He seems to 
be on the roof of the world. In the clear atmosphere it 
is possible to see an area larger than all of Pennsylvania 
or New York or Illinois. On three sides are multitudes of 
snow-capped peaks, now crowded together, again widely 
separated, while to the east the eye reaches out to the 
endless plains of Kansas. There are canyons, river 
valleys, mountain passes, mining districts, upland val- 
leys, all the way from the regions beyond Denver to the 
glorious mountains and meadows of San Luis Park. At 
2 17 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

the observer's feet are the bare rocks, reaching down 
thousands of feet to timber line, where begins the Pike 
National Forest, * 'whose towering pines, from this alti- 
tude, seem like blades of grass. ' * 

Near at hand is the lonely station of the United 
States Signal Sei^vice, whose observers, for a brief 
period, once thought they were to share their vigil with 
the astronomers in charge of the Bryden Fund Observa- 
tory, for which Harvard College was seeking a location. 
Gladly the observers received the explorers of the col- 
lege as they reached the summit with their burros, laden 
with mysterious equipment. Curiously they watched 
the setting up of the gigantic telescope, a mere frame 
of timber with huge lens and eye-piece. Eagerly they 
waited for the result of the experiments, and sadly they 
heard the word that the conditions of the atmosphere 
were not favorable, that the search for a location 
must be continued elsewhere — a search that was not 
ended until the ideal site was found in 1891 at Are- 
quipa, Peru. 

Among the reasons for the astronomers^ rejection 
of the Pike 's Peak location were the frequent thunder- 
storms. But, while these storms seriously disturb the 
atmosphere, so that accurate observations of the 
heavens cannot be made, they are one of the attractions 
of the summit. At times they cause a wonderful dis- 
play, so that the observers in the signal station have 
the pleasure of playing hide and seek with the elusive 
lightning and associating on intimate terms with "ane- 
mometer cups that look like circles of fire." 

Those who come toward Pike's Peak from the East 
will agree that the mountain is as elusive as the light- 
ning. They may think they have it almost under their 
18 ■ 




SKIING IN THE KOCKY MOUNTAINS 



THE WALLS OF PARADISE 

hand, but they are disappointed in a manner that has 
become familiar to all who visit the clear, deceptive air 
of Colorado. From the car window the Peak seems to 
be close at hand even at La Junta, one hundred miles 
away, while from Colorado Springs one thinks it is only 
a step to the slopes that lead to the snowy crest, though 
the distance is still fifteen miles. Day after day the 
emigrants in their slow-moving wagons thought that 
the next day would surely enable them to ease their fever 
in the atmosphere of the cool mountain, and many of 
them must have felt like that disgusted one of their num- 
ber who said, '^I don't believe Pike has any peak." 

Those emigrants might have taken comfort from the 
fact that the first white man who has left a record of 
his visit to the neighborhood of Pike's Peak made the 
same mistake. On November 15, 1806, while leading his 
expedition for the mapping of the Arkansas and Red 
Rivers, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike first saw a great moun- 
tain that looked like a blue cloud. As he approached 
it, he marveled at its white sides, which seemed to be 
covered with snow or a white stone. 

''Three cheers for the Mexican Mountains!" the 
men of the expedition shouted, while their leader noted 
that the mountains formed a natural boundary between 
Louisiana and New Mexico ; for at that time the moun- 
tain now known as Pike's Peak was just within the 
angle formed by the boundary line of Mexico as it turned 
north toward the Grrand River and east toward the 
plains. Indeed, the border was so close that Pike soon 
crossed it unwittingly and was led by Mexican soldiers 
to Santa Fe, and from there out of the country. 

The day after catching sight of the snowy peak the 
expedition hurried on, sure that the goal would be 

19 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

readied before night. But they proceeded for four 
days more, each morning thinking that night would 
find them at the apparently receding mountain. Finally, 
after a pause on the present site of Pueblo, Pike thought 
that there would be ample time between one in the 
afternoon and sunset to reach the slopes of the Blue 
Mountain, as he called it. Two days later he was climb- 
ing Cheyenne Mountain, miles away from his goal, 
though he thought he had reached it. The night was 
passed in a cave near the summit. In the morning 
he wrote : 

Arose hungry, thirsty, and extremely sore, from 
the unevenness of the rocks on which we had lain all 
night, but was amply compensated for our toil by the 
sublimity of the prospects below. The unbounded 
prairie was overhung with clouds, which appeared like 
the ocean in a storm, wave piled on wave, and foaming, 
whilst the sky over our heads was perfectly clear. Com- 
menced our march up the mountain, and in about an 
hour arrived at the summit of the chain ; here we found 
the snow middle deep and discovered no sign of beast 
or bird inhabiting the region. The summit of the Grand 
Peak, which was entirely bare of vegetation, and cov- 
ered with snow, now appeared at the distance of fifteen 
or sixteen miles from us, and as high as that we had 
ascended; it would have taken a whole day's march 
to have arrived at the base, when I believe no human 
being could have arrived at its summit. 

A few days later Pike took the altitude of the peak. 
He called it 18,581 feet. Surely he could be excused for 
his error, in view of the fact that as late as 1836 govern- 
ment surveyors insisted, after visiting the Rocky Moun- 
tain region, that many of the peaks were at least 25,000 
feet high, '* being exceeded only by the Himalayas." 

20 



THE WALLS OF PARADISE 

The error of Pike in declaring that the peak that now 
bears his name could not be climbed, and in feeling 
that this did not really make much difference, since 
white men would never wish to dispute the Indians' 
claim to this sterile mountain district, persisted for 
many years. In 1836 Captain Bonneville, after speak- 
ing of the region as * ' an immense belt of rocky moun- 
tains and volcanic planes, several hundred miles in 
width," said that they ''must ever remain an irreclaim- 
able wilderness, intervening between the abodes of 
civilization, and affording a last refuge to the Indian. ' ' 
He proposed to leave this rich country to ' ' roving tribes 
of hunters, living in huts or lodges, and following the 
migration of the game. ' ' There would be nothing there 
' ' to tempt the cupidity of the white man. ' ' 

Only a little more than twelve years after Pike gave 
his opinion that the Blue Mountain could not be sur- 
mounted. Dr. Edmn F. James succeeded in reaching 
the summit, and in looking down on the wonderful pano- 
rama that repaid all the toil of the climb. He called 
the mountain James' Peak, but fortunately the name 
Pike's Peak was later given to it. 

For many years there was nothing but a single 
trail for those who ventured to follow in the footsteps 
of James. Then came a better trail, up Euxton Creek. 
Few use the old trail to-day, but the joy in store for 
those who have the courage to try it is apt to be greater 
than that of any who toil up the carriage road, who 
ride up the cog railway, or who take the exhilarating 
ride up the double track motor highway first used 
in 1916. 

Those who would use the most wonderful of all 
motor roads should start from Colorado Springs, ride 

21 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

up historic Ute Pass, and along the foaming Fountain 
Creek. At Cascade is the real beginning of the Pike's 
Peak Highway. From there the road rises 6694 feet 
in the eighteen miles to the sunmait. 

Above Cascade were difficulties that engineers said 
could not be solved, but the road was successfully cut 
through the granite ledge, and, at a distance of fourteen 
miles from the beginning of the highway in Ute Pass, it 
reached the crest of the Rampart Range after what has 
been called a series of ten immense swings, forming 
two Ws, with two swings preceding and two following. 
Three miles farther on is the summit. 

Who cares to dwell on details of the construction of 
the six bridges, whose floors are of steel beams and 
concrete, or to think of the solid masonry parapets, and 
the hundred and one other excellences of this marvel of 
road-making, while he can think instead of the awe- 
inspiring vision from the chief summit of a ridge which 
Nym Crinkle, a writer of a past generation, called the 
Walls of Paradise? From there, it has been said, 
''more miles of mountain and plain may be seen than 
from any other point on the globe reached by automo- 
bile. ' ' There is the Sangre de Cristo range, and here 
are the Spanish Peaks. Over yonder is Leadville on 
its granite foundation. To the north lies Denver, with 
the great peaks of the Front Range. Down below are 
Colorado Springs and Manitou, looking like toy vil- 
lages. Off to the south Pueblo holds the gaze an in- 
stant, while far beyond are those fertile plains which 
Washington Irving said would probably be inhabited 
in the future by a hybrid race made up of Indians and 
fugitives from justice. And far to the west are moun- 
tains from whose sides flow the rivers that have been 

22 



THE WALLS OF PARADISE 

harnessed for the watering of lands which, but for them, 
would have become fit only for the habitation of the 
* 'wasting and uncivilized aborigines," who, Pike was 
sure, would possess them forever. 

Only four or five hours are required for the journey 
from Colorado Springs to the summit from which all 
these things may be seen, and for the return trip to 
the foot of ''the Walls of Paradise." But into these 
hours on the uplands may be crowded joys that will be 
present through many years of life on the lower levels. 



CHAPTER II 

UNDER THE WALLS OF PARADISE 
IN THE PIKE'S PEAK REGION 

ONE day in 1871, when some of those interested 
in the railroad from Denver to the region east 
of Pike's Peak were exploring in advance of 
the road builders, they came to a commanding site 
whose outlook to the west on the foothills and the great 
sentinel mountains, and to the southeast on the sloping 
plains, so impressed them that they decided they must 
have a town there. So they took the steps that led to the 
building of Colorado Springs, the city that stands at the 
gateway of what has been called the most marvelous 
range of scenery to be found in narrow compass in all 
the world. Dark canyons, yawning caves, graceful 
waterfalls, rugged mountain peaks, and towering cliffs 
are so abundant that the visitor is dazed by their num- 
ber and overpowered by their magnificence. 

Once Bayard Taylor, after gazing in rapt wonder 
at the prospect spread before him from a point close 
to the city, said: 

In variety and harmony of form, in effect against 
the dark blue sky, in breadth and grandeur, I know of 
no external feature of the Alps which can be placed 
beside it. If you could take away the valley of the 
Rhone, and unite the Alps of Savoy with the Bernese 
Oberland, you might attain a tolerable idea of the 
Rocky Mountains. Nowhere distorted or grotesque, 
never monotonous, lovely in form and atmospheric 
effect, I may recall some mountain chains which equal, 
but none which surpass these. 

24 



UNDER THE WALLS OF PARADISE 

From Ute Pass beautiful Fountain Creek flows to 
the plain where Colorado Springs has her seat, a plain 
almost as high above the sea as the summit of Mount 
Washington. From the broad streets there are inspir- 
ing views of the amphitheater of mountains that give 
mute invitation to a series of drives and explorations, 
and the traveler washes for weeks instead of days in 
this favored spot. 

Until 1917 Colorado Springs shared with two other 
cities the wonders of her situation ''under the Walls 
of Paradise." During that year Colorado City became 
a part of Colorado Springs, and now Manitou only is 
left as a separate municipality. But it would be a 
mistake to permit the history of Colorado City to be 
forgotten. It is one of the oldest settlements in Colo- 
rado, having been laid out in 1859. At first the name 
was Oldto^vn. It was the earliest capital of the terri- 
tory, and had the honor of receiving the state legislature 
before that body sought Golden and Denver. 

Manitou lies near the entrance of Ute Pass, where 
the Indians had a trail that led into the heart of the 
mountains. Down this trail they came with their inva- 
lids, seeking the healing mineral springs, which, in 
gratitude to the Great Spirit, they called ''Manitou." 

The great pillars of sandstone that provide an en- 
trance to the Garden of the Gods are at some distance 
from Manitou. These curious pinnacles, one of which 
is three hundred feet high, while the other is three 
hundred and fifty feet, give a good introduction to the 
weird weathered rock forms of a region that may not 
be a garden, and certainly has in it nothing to remind 
the visitor of gods, yet has a fascination that cannot be 
withstood. Guides have taken it upon themselves to 

25 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

name the rocks of the garden, in accordance with their 
own interpretation of their likeness to animals and 
natural objects. But the visitor should feel that he has 
just as much right to give names to the forms according 
to his imagination. Differences of opinion will but add 
attraction to the visit. It may be that some one will 
think a certain rock is like a lion, while the very next 
visitor will be just as sure that it is a perfect likeness 
of a turkey. But what of that ? The Indians probably 
had altogether different names for the formations in 
the park, for this was one of the places which they 
delighted to visit. 

Among other secrets of this wonderland known long 
ago to the Indians, but only in recent years to their 
white successors, were the caves on the heights far back 
of the Garden of the Gods. One of these is in Williams 
Canyon, while the other, the much more extensive Cave 
of the Winds, is on the forbidding face of the canyon's 
limestone cliffs. These caves are connected by a pleas- 
ing story. It is related that the pastor of a Colorado 
Springs church organized an exploring society among 
his boys. One day he led his charges toward a cave in 
Williams Canyon, then little known, of which they had 
heard. The owner, however, looked askance at the com- 
pany. ' ' Very well, boys, let us find a cave of our own, ' * 
was the leader's comforting word. The surprising part 
of the story is that within an hour they found the way 
to the Cave of the Winds, word of whose extensive 
chambers and beautiful formation the boys carried back 
that night to their own comrades. 

Williams Canyon, whose walls are frequently so 
close together that carriages cannot pass there, is but 
one of the numerous canyons converging at Manitou, 

26 




WILLIAMS CANON, NOIilll (Ji M\y 



UNDER THE WALLS OF PARADISE 

made accessible by the many marvelous roads that lead 
out of Colorado Springs to all parts of the park system 
of a city that has wisely made a playground of almost 
everything in sight. 

Up one of the canyons reached from Manitou leads 
the Crystal Park auto road. By tremendous zigzags 
it climbs Sutherland Canyon, where Pike the explorer 
succeeded in outwitting pursuing Indians, up the rugged 
slope of Eagle Mountain, to a point under Cameron's 
Cone. Loops, hairpin turns, and a steel turntable help 
in the conquest of the mountain. The road affords 
views so different from those spread out before those 
who go to the summit of Pike's Peak that both trips 
are needed to complete the vision that waits for those 
who would persuade the Walls of Paradise to yield 
their secrets. 

A third trip should be taken before the Pike 's Peak 
region is left behind. This is by the Cripple Creek 
Short Line, from Colorado Springs to the central town 
of the richest gold-producing region in the world. The 
air-line distance is less than twenty miles, but the train 
covers fifty miles in making a journey that justifies 
even such superlatives as ''the trip that bankrupts the 
English language." By twists and turns innumerable, 
by tunnels and bridges and steep inclines, by loops and 
bends and curves, by climbing ridges and by exploring 
ravines, the road conquers the labyrinth of the mountain 
barriers and reaches the land of gold. 

The Cripple Creek road leads through a country that 
was the delight of Helen Hunt Jackson, the novelist. 
It crosses the head both of North Cheyenne Canyon and 
South Cheyenne Canyon, where she persisted in roam- 
ing, even though the sight of a woman in these mountain 

27 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

fastnesses startled those whom she encountered. She 
did not stop with startling men. Once, in this district, 
a camper's dog ran from her in terror. In vain she 
tried to coax the animal to approach her. "It's no 
use, ma'am," the owner explained; "you see, that 
dog's never seen a woman before." 

The walls of these twin canyons, frequently very 
close together, are from a thousand to fifteen hundred 
feet high. In both canyons are numerous waterfalls. 
The Seven Falls of South Canyon and the Pillars of 
Hercules are notable features. 

Immediately south of the twin canyons is Cheyenne 
Mountain, the peak which Pike succeeded in climbing 
when he thought he was on the way to the much higher 
peak to the north. Mrs. Jackson felt that Pike had 
chosen the better mountain; she knew Pike's Peak, but 
she took keener pleasure in climbing Cheyenne Moun- 
tain, declaring that the real glories of mountain scenery 
are independent of height. 

On one of her trips to Cheyenne Mountain the novel- 
ist nature-lover was attracted by a grave of which 
she wrote : 

It lies, with four pines guarding it closely, on a 
westward slope which holds the very last rays of the 
setting sun. We look up from it to the glorious snow- 
topped peaks which pierce the sky, and the way seems 
very short over which our friend has gone. 

Her thoughts turned to that lonely grave on the 
mountainside when she was dying, and in response to 
her wish she was buried not far from the highest of the 
falls in South Cheyenne Canyon. Louise Chandler 
Moulton wrote of the request : 

28 



UNDER THE WALLS OF PARADISE 

To Cheyenne Pass, she dying, whispered — 
Take me there, where the strong- sun will find 
Me in the morns, and in the silent nights 
The stars bend over me, as if aware 
Their friend is kindred with their fires who watched 
them long. 

The roaring mountain birds will scream 
Above me, flying toward the light, unscared. 
Free things will trample round the lonely spot 
Where rests my heart, of old untamed as they, 
But quiet with Death's quietness at last. 

Take me to Cheyenne Pass, and lay me there. 
Within the mountains ' steadfast heart ; and leave me 
Neighbored by the wild things and the clouds. 
And still in death beneath the deathless sky. 

But the day came when it seemed best to move the 
grave to the cemetery on the plain below, for tourists 
persisted in their quest of souvenirs in the chosen spot. 
So the body lies within the shadow of the mountain and 
the canyon which she loved so well. 



CHAPTER III 
ALLURING CITIES OF THE PIONEERS 

IN Colorado events of the year 1870 are ancient 
history; stories of 1860 go back to primeval times ; 
and suspicion of a man's veracity is aroused if 
he has too much to say of such an improbable date as 
1857. For the Keystone State of the Mountains has 
not yet passed a commonwealth's period of first youth. 

To be sure, when Colorado desires to claim a place 
in the company of those gray-beard states whose first 
settlers took root within their borders in the days when 
the nation was young, it is always possible to point to 
Pueblo, with the statement that the name is a reminder 
of the Mexicans who had their houses of adobe there 
long before Pike sought his peak or Fremont took to 
pathfinding in the Eockies, and that Mormons settled 
there for a time in 1846. But the day of the coming of 
the first American townbuilders was then a long way off. 

It is easy to reel off figures about the Pittsburgh 
of the West, which turns out more than half of the goods 
manufactured in all of Colorado, and has a factory pay- 
roll of two million dollars a month. But it is so much 
more picturesque to speak of the magnificent faith of 
the promoters of 1874 who sowed the East with a 
pamphlet declaring, ''There is but little doubt that at 
this point will stand the Great Central City of the Far 
West," and to note in passing that to-day's successors 
of these early boomers who were sure of the region's 
tremendous growth have inherited the ability to say 
large things of the city because they are perfectly con- 
so 



ALLURING CITIES OF THE PIONEERS 

vinced of their truth. And why should they not have 
vision when they need only lift their eyes to the west 
to see glorious mountain peaks that make the town's 
four thousand feet of altitude seem insignificant? 

The men who laid the foundations of this Gateway 
to the West distinguished the site by approaching the 
upper portion of the famous Las Animas Land Grant, 
a relic of the days of Mexican rule, whose original 
owners boasted the picturesque names Charles Beaubien 
and Guadeloupe Miranda. In 1841 the governor of 
New Mexico gave to them more than twenty- six hun- 
dred square miles. By the Treaty of 1848 the United 
States agreed to respect the grant. An American, 
Lucien Maxwell, succeeded to the ownership by marry- 
ing one of Senor Beaubien 's six daughters, and by pur- 
chase of the rights of his five sisters-in-law and of 
Miranda. It is said that he paid to each of the ladies 
from three to six thousand dollars. 

For a few years Maxwell had the distinction of 
owning more land than any one else in the world. Yet 
he was willing, in 1866, to resign his title for $75,000. 
He must have been glad he did not have the opportunity 
to unload, for in 1870 he was given $650,000 for the prop- 
erty. The purchasers made a good bargain. Within 
six months they more than doubled their money. After 
a time the princely domain became known as the Max- 
well Land Grant. On its broad reaches farmers have 
made homes, railroads have been built, and coal mines 
have been opened. And farms, railroads and mines 
pay heavy tribute to the city that, — though it has not yet 
completely borne out the proud boasts of its pioneers, — 
is now, and probably will continue to be, the second 
city of the state. 

31 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Early prospectors in Colorado were so eager to find 
gold that they did not care to see the coal that has 
brought so much wealth to the state. Long before the 
gold was actually found travelers talked of it. A book 
published in Cincinnati only about ten years after the 
exploration of Pike made some appetizing declarations : 

These mountains are supposed to contain minerals, 
precious stones, and gold and silver ore. It is but lately 
that they have taken the name Eocky Mountains; 
by all the old travelers they were called the Shining 
Mountains, from an infinite number of crystal stones of 
an amazing size, with which they are covered, and which, 
when the sun shines upon them, sparkle so as to be seen 
for a great distance. The same early travelers give it 
as their opinion that in future these mountains would be 
found to contain more riches than those of Hindustan 
and Malabar, or the golden coast of Guinea, or the 
Mines of Peru. 

Yet it was not until 1858 that two yomig men from 
Lawrence, Kansas, told of finding gold near the base of 
Pike's Peak, and it was two years later when prospec- 
tors found rich dust in California Gulch, near the pres- 
ent site of Leadville. Soon there were two great cen- 
ters of mining activity, called Old Oro and Oro. There 
was then so little water for washing out the gravel that 
this was used many times. It is related that the number 
of mines was so large, and the amount of water available 
was so small, that when the water reached the last man, 
after use by each miner down the gulch in succession, it 
was nothing but liquid mud. 

In the mad rush for gold the miners passed by an 
even greater source of wealth. In the gulch there were 
many boulders in the M^ay; these they pushed aside, 
thinking of them only as impediments. But in 1876 

32 



ALLURING CITIES OF THE PIONEERS 

some one found that these boulders contained deposits 
of lead carbonate, which was rich in silver. This dis- 
covery was made on the hills on the edge of what soon 
became known as Leadville. Within a few weeks men 
and supplies were pouring into the new camp from 
Colorado Springs, by way of Ute Pass. 

** You'd oughter been here 'bout that time," one of 
the picturesque characters who took freight up the 
pass said to a modem traveler. "Things were lively 
then, I tell you. Why, sir, you couldn't a' driv up the 
Pass then for the teams there was goin' an' comin' 
all the while." 

Helen Hunt Jackson was one of the early visitors 
to ''the loftiest town in the world," as LeadviUe was 
then called, by reason of its elevation of ten thou- 
sand feet, from which it looks out on Mount Elbert and 
Mount Massive, the twin peaks, the highest in the state, 
whose summits reach up more than fourteen thousand 
feet into the snow. She told of finding old roads leading 
to the town alive ; she saw sixty-two wagons during the 
first day's journey toward the camp. "The most inter- 
esting thing in the procession was the human element," 
wrote this early traveler up Ute Pass; "families, 
father, mother, crowds of little cliildren, bedsteads, iron 
pots, comforters, chairs, tables, cooking-stoves, cradles 
— wedged into small wagons, toiling slowly up the long 
hills, all going to Leadville . . . solitary adven- 
turers whose worldly possessions consisted of a pack- 
mule, a bundle, and a pickaxe, and adventurers, still 
more solitary, with only the bundle and pickaxe, 
and no mule." 

From the first Leadville has had to contend with 
many difficulties. It is so high that it is apt to snow 

3 33 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

and freeze every month in the year. It was long thought 
impossible to keep pigs at such an elevation. These 
difficulties would seem great enough, but they were 
nothing in comparison to the trouble of securing an 
adequate supply of water. 

An early visitor found a buxom washerwoman who 
had solved the problem to her satisfaction. ' 'Where do 
you get your water T* she was asked. '*0h, I 'ire my 
'usband and 'is partner to pack it up 'ere for me," she 
replied. ' ' They pack up all my wash water, and I keep 
them in tobacco. That 's our bargain. ' ' 

Such primitive methods did not satisfy everybody. 
An enterprising company thought that here was a good 
opportunity to make dividends. They proceeded to lay 
mains. Because frost in winter found its way far into 
the ground, it was necessary to put the pipes six feet 
below the surface. But the early houses were built 
on piles, without foundation, so the water had to be led 
up many feet without protection from the weather be- 
fore it could be ready for use. Of course a freeze came 
and the pipes burst. 

But Leadville bravely solved her difficulties or found 
a way to bear them. Always the city has shown the 
same spirit that enabled her, in 1892, when the price of 
silver was too low for profitable mining, to discover 
the source of the gold that led so many men to California 
Gulch in 1860. And in later years great quantities of 
zinc and copper have been added to the products of 
the district. 

A writer of 1879 thought that Leadville was a city 
of a day, like many of the mining centers. *'So long 
as Leadville fever lasts " . . . "When the reaction 
comes, as it does come in all these mining excitements" 

34 



ALLURING CITIES OF THE PIONEERS 

. . . ' * When the Leadville mines begin to dwindle in 
yield, and the frantic throng of delvers and settlers 
turn into another road" — these were among the predic- 
tions of evil. Yet the evil days have not come. Lead- 
ville is still one of the greatest mineral producers in 
Colorado, and one of the world's most picturesque cities. 

A few miles east of Leadville is a town that has not 
had such a fortunate history, though it has a pleasing 
name — Fair Play. Yet that attractive name did not 
come in an attractive manner. The tradition is that 
''two men loved one woman. The man whom the 
woman loved deserted her. The man whom the woman 
did not love followed the faithless lover, found him, un- 
armed, working with his miner's pick on the banks of the 
Platte Eiver. The avenger pointed his rifle, and was 
about to fire. But the runaway held up his hands. 
' Fair play ! Give me fair play ! ' he called. So he was 
sent for his rifle, and he came back to his death. ' ' 

Helen Hunt Jackson, who told this story, said that 
one day she asked a woman : 

''Do you like living in Fair Play?" 

"Yes, I have been in much badder places," was the 
chuckling reply. 

"Where was that?" 

"Central. But that hole-y place; if go out house, 
you is under mountain." 

Central City, of which the woman spoke, is in the 
county north of Fair Play, and is little more than an 
hour's ride from Denver; yet it is 8300 feet high, fifty 
per cent higher than Denver. The road from Denver 
taken by early seekers for gold rose at one point six- 
teen hundred feet in a mile and a half. The town itself 
was no worse than the approach to it. 

35 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

One who saw it in the days of the pioneers said: 

*'The houses looked like bird cages hung on hooks, 
jutting out from tlie mountainsides. Nearly every 
house was reached by a flight of stairs, and though it 
might be two or three stories high on the lower side, 
there would be an entrance on the level with the top 
floor on the upper side. ' ' 

To-day Central City people are able to smile at these 
stories of the early aspect of the town, but they rejoice 
in their advantageous situation in the midst of the peaks 
that made access so difficult at that time. 

Not far north of Central City is a town as ancient 
as any in Colorado — Boulder, an educational center 
remarkable not only for its culture but for its own par- 
ticular canyon, the Boulder Canyon, and for the beauty 
of the Switzerland Trail that leads through it to Neder- 
land, eighteen miles southwest, where the rare tungsten 
ore is mined. It is claimed that here and at Eldora, 
a few miles distant, most of this metal produced in the 
United States is secured. 

Another source of Boulder's prosperity is the fertile 
irrigated lands almost within the shadow of the moun- 
tains. There are in the section of the state north of 
Denver a number of these irrigation centers. Perhaps 
the most remarkable of them, both because of its his- 
tory and because of its present, is one of the few^ suc- 
cessful ' ' decreed ' * towns in the country. It was Nathan 
Cook Meeker who made the decree that was responsible 
for Greeley, but the town was named for Meeker's chief 
on the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley. Perhaps it 
was as well that the great editor was not at the head of 
the enterprise, for his success as a town builder was 

36 



ALLURING CITIES OF THE PIONEERS 

not nearly so great as his fame as an editor. Witness 
his failure in Pike County, Pennsylvania! 

In December, 1869, many of the readers of the Tri- 
bune were attracted by a card in which Meeker told of 
his purpose to establish a colony in the west. The invi- 
tation was to temperance men who were anxious to 
establish a good society. The response was gratifying. 
Each applicant was required to pay one hundred and 
fifty dollars for a membership certificate. To a com- 
mittee was committed the task of finding a suitable loca- 
tion. A section in Wyoming proved quite attractive to 
the committee, but they at length fixed on a part of what 
is now Weed County, Colorado. It has seemed to some 
remarkable that this choice was made, for the land 
selected did not present an inviting appearance. It 
was barren and covered with cactus. Most people would 
have passed it by. But the member of the committee 
noted that it was located in the delta formed by the 
junction of the Cache la Poudre, which has been called 
one of the most beautiful torrents in Colorado, and 
the Platte River. Then there were also the valleys of 
Big Thompson and of St. Vrain. Sharp eyes observed 
that a few inches of earth along the banks of the stream 
bore luxuriant vegetation, which looked the greener 
because of the contrast with the surrounding brown 
waste. They had a vision of the whole tract watered 
from the streams by irrigation and made fertile as the 
bits along the streams. 

From the railroad 9324 acres were bought for 
$31,058. To private owners $27,982 was paid for 2592 
acres. The United States provided 60,000 acres, on 
which the first filing fee was $930. Finally a contract 

37 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

was made with the railroad for 50,000 acres additional, 
to be bought, if desired, at from three to four dollars 
an acre. 

In 1870 the colonists began to occupy the land. Most 
of them came from New England and New York. It 
was not a part of the plan of ''The Union Colony of 
Colorado ' ' to have community of property ; each share- 
holder was to have a lot in the town and to cultivate 
ground outside of it, the aim being ''to avoid the isola- 
tion of American farm life and to secure the advantage 
of associated effort. ' ' With their other privileges the 
colonists determined to have the intellectual advan- 
tages they had enjoyed in the East. For this reason 
thirteen thousand dollars was soon appropriated for 
a school building. 

This creation of a New England town meeting trans- 
planted to the far West is of special significance in the 
story of Colorado because the appeal was made to those 
who desired to live by land cultivation, whereas other 
settlements had attracted only those who sought a for- 
tune in the mines or by herding cattle. 

Those who marvel at the wonders of irrigation in 
modem days in Colorado will be interested in the fact 
that the first attempts to irrigate the lands of the Union 
Colony were not very successful. Ditches were far too 
small, and there were other errors. To the discourage- 
ments due to these temporary failures others were 
added. Grasshoppers ate the crops, blizzards raged, 
hailstones fell. But at length prosperity came. To- 
day Greeley looks out on smiling valleys where the beet 
and the potato are king. The town has its Potato Day, 
just as Boulder has its Strawberry Day -and Rocky 
Ford its Melon Day. 



ALLURING CITIES OF THE PIONEERS 

Meeker, the founder of the colony, refused to take 
advantage of opportunities to invest in lands, and years 
later it became necessary for him to make his living 
as Indian Agent at White River, now Meeker, Colorado. 
But he was well content. Not long before he was killed 
by the Utes he was driving with a friend near Greeley. 
As they reached a height above the town which was the 
child of his best efforts, he said, simply : 

*^ After all, although the enterprise yielded me noth- 
ing in riches, in a worldly sense, yet I am proud to have 
been the leader in such a movement ; it will be counted 
an honor to everyone who took part in the settlement of 
Greeley. I am more than compensated in the grand 
success of the undertaking itself, and I have nothing 
to regret." 

Greeley is on a fine motor road that leads from 
Cheyenne to Denver, the city that proudly tells of the 
coming there of the pioneers of 1858. The oldest por- 
tion of the future city was known as Auraria. Across 
the creek was St. Charles, a settlement already deserted 
when General Larimer came that way and laid out the 
old town as Denver City, naming it for Governor Den- 
ver of Kansas Territory, of which Colorado was then 
a part. 

Denver city was young when, in April, 1859, the first 
issue of The Rocky Mountain News made its grandilo- 
quent bow from the settlement — 

Where a few months ago the wild beasts and wilder 
Indians held undisturbed possession — where now 
surges the advancing wave of Anglo-Saxon enterprise 
and civilization, where soon, we fondly hope, will be 
erected a great and powerful State, another empire in 
the sisterhood of empires. 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

The first mail came to Denver from the nearest post 
office, Fort Laramie, more than two hundred miles dis- 
tant, a few weeks after the appearance of the new 
paper's salutatory. A little later came Horace Greeley, 
who found the best hotel so uncomfortable that he de- 
cided to **jump" one of the numerous empty cabins, 
wliich was about ten feet square. Not long afterward 
the owner returned. He did not seem a bit surprised 
to find a guest, but with the open-hearted hospitality 
that has characterized Denver from that day, he decided 
that the cabin was large enough for two. 

A year later "Glittering Gold," a yellow-backed 
pamphlet printed to lure the adventurer, spoke of Den- 
ver City and Auraria as points on the line to the mines. 
Not long afterward Auraria became a part of Denver, 
though the business center remained on the Auraria 
side of the creek until it was wiped out by the flood 
of 1864. 

Citizens of the growing town soon found opportu- 
nity to boast. They told of the record for sunshine, they 
spoke of the wonderful scenery, and they declared that 
the place was destined to be * ' the largest city between 
Chicago and San Francisco." They took as a matter 
of course the praise of visitors like the editor of the 
New York Herald who, in 1871, said, ''Denver and Paris 
are the two cities with which I fell in love at first sight." 

After a brief stay in Colorado Springs and a longer 
stay in Golden, the state capital moved to Denver in 
1868. Almost from that time Denver has been noted for 
the persistent manner in which she permits politicians 
to rule her and rob her. Of course there are periodical 
attempts to ''oust the gang," but when, after years of 
struggle, victory crowns the efforts of the reformer, 

40 



ALLURING CITIES OF THE PIONEERS 

there is soon a relapse into a condition worse than the 
former state. 

"Why does Denver go back?" magazine writers 
have asked so often that the references to Denver in that 
fascinating book, '^ Poole's Index," are, most of them, 
under the heading, "Politics." Edward Hungerford, 
in "The Personality of American Cities," has sug- 
gested ingeniously that * * the isolation and the altitude, 
constantly tending to make humans nervous and un- 
strung," is responsible, in a measure, for the troubled 
state of local politics. This condition was vastly im- 
proved by the adoption in 1916 of a modified form of 
city government. 

But there has been time for something more than 
politics. For one thing, there has been a determination 
to overcome the handicap laid on the city when the 
Union PaeificRailroad passed by far to the north. Moun- 
tains to the west seemed to forbid direct outlet to Salt 
Lake City, so for a season the business men were forced 
to be content with a roundabout road by way of Pueblo. 
Yet there was a man of faith named David H. Moffat 
who declared that a road should, could and would be 
built, directly west across the mountains that look so 
inviting to the tourist, but are forbidding and all but 
impossible to the railway engineer. To Moffat, how- 
ever, there was no such word as "impossible"; when 
outside capitalists refused to be inveigled, he interested 
local capital and began work. Thirty tunnels were built 
in seventy-three miles. The summit was crossed at 
Rollins Pass, 11,600 feet high, though later more than 
two thousand feet of this height was subtracted by a 
tunnel through the barrier mountain. That tunnel 
bring-s Vasquez, beyond the western portal, twenty-five 

41 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

miles nearer Denver than the route over the sununit. 
The road to the summit may still be taken, and that visi- 
tor is fortunate who is able from the height to look 
down on the wonderful panorama of glaciers, mountain 
summits, and canyon walls. 

The death of Moffat, the seer, caused a temporary 
interruption in construction, and a receivership, but 
work has been resumed, and the miracle line has passed 
through the forests and the rich coal fields of Eoutt 
County, and far over the line into Moffat County. Some 
day it will reach Salt Lake City, and Denver will have 
her direct outlet to the Pacific. 

''The Mile High City," as Denver has been called, 
has a tremendously impressive location. From the 
streets two hundred miles of mountains are on display, 
from Gray's Peak and Long's Peak on the north to 
Pike 's Peak and mountains still farther south. In 1865 
Samuel Bowles, the famous newspaper man from New 
England, wrote of this setting: 

No town that I know of in all the world has such a 
panorama of perpetual beauty spread before it as Den- 
ver has in the best and broadest belt of the Rocky 
Mountains, that rises up from the valley in which it 
is built, and winds away to the right and the left as far 
as the eye can see — fields and woods and rocks and snow, 
mounting and melting away to the sky in a line often 
indistinguishable, and sending back the rays of the sun 
in colors and shapes that paint and pencil never repro- 
duced, that poetry never described. 

That full advantage may be taken of this queenly set- 
ting Denver plans to persuade the Government to make 
a National Park at her doors. But, that the appeal may 
be irresistible, her citizens are acquiring all patented 
42 



ALLURING CITIES OF THE PIONEERS 

lands within the bounds of the proposed park, including 
the lakes on Mt. Evans. 

But Denver is not waiting on the United States for 
her playgrounds. Already ten scattered tracts have 
been brought together in the Denver Mountain Parks, 
containing in all about one hundred and fifty miles of 
meadows, streams, canyons, lakes and mountains, the 
mean elevation being from seven thousand to eight thou- 
sand feet. The nearest of these tracts is on Lookout 
Mountain, twelve miles distant, approached by a con- 
crete roadway. The tourist who takes the road is able 
to proceed to the other tracts in the park, over a per- 
fect system of sixty-five miles, making a circle trip by 
way of Morrison back to Denver. 

Lariat Trail, the road up Mt. Lookout, is one of the 
most remarkable roads in Colorado. The views from 
various points of vantage are memorable. More than 
once the streets of Denver, far below, and to one side, 
are plainly visible. Again the downward prospect is of 
Clear Creek, of interest not merely because of its 
beauty, but also because it was the scene of the first 
gold discovery in the state. Once, from a bold cliff. 
Golden appears two thousand feet below ; this spot is not 
far from the grave of Colonel Cody (Buffalo Bill), who 
was buried far above the plains where he won his fame, 
as the most fitting place that could have been selected. 

And this is but the beginning of the route through 
the Mountain Parks that provides inspiration and satis- 
faction for hours of the motorist's time, for days of 
the time the even more fortunate traveler who walks 
leisurely over the trails. 

This masterpiece of road construction in the great 
municipal park system has not yet been completed, 

43 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

though sections have been built. It connects with the 
Mount Evans road in Bergen Park, thirty-three miles 
from Denver, and is to go sixty-five miles to the summit 
of Mt. Evans, several hundred feet higher than Pike 's 
Peak. Thus the total rise will be fully nine thousand 
feet. The final ten miles of the route will ' ' follow the 
sky line of mountains that rank in height with the peaks 
of the continental divide," and will overlook Summit 
Lake, 13,000 feet high; Mt. Bierstadt, whose almost 
unscalable walls are a constant lure to the mountain- 
climber; Lake Abyss, two thousand feet down in the 
chasm between Bierstadt and Evans, as well as a dozen 
more lakes fed by the melting snows and the ice-fields 
that long made the conquest of these mountains so dan- 
gerous and so attractive. 



CHAPTER IV 
IN NATURE'S GARDENS 
THE PARKS OF COLORADO 

IT is the dream of Enos A. Mills to persuade Con- 
gress to dedicate as National Parks the entire 
Forest Eange of the Eocky Mountains, from Wy- 
oming on the north to the Arkansas Valley on the south. 
The eastern foothills would be included in the two- 
hundred-and-fifty-mile stretch of playground which 
would combine lofty valleys, peaks that raise their heads 
far above the pines into the region of eternal snow, 
fearsome canyons, towering cliffs, lakes of wondrous 
beauty, and rivers that rush and tumble in their swift 
descent from the mountains toward the plains. 

The erection of such a park would be only the bring- 
ing together under an inclusive name of regions clearly 
set apart by nature for the delight of man. From the 
days when the territory was young these regions have 
been known as North Park, Middle Park, South Park 
and San Luis Park. Perhaps thirteen thousand square 
miles are embraced in these mountain boundaries, much 
of the territory so fertile that its development will 
astound even those who have become accustomed to the 
tales of marvelous fertility that come from Colorado. 
The high valleys of these parks are entirely surrounded 
by mountains, except San Luis Park, which looks out 
on the plains of eastern Colorado. Each one is distin- 
guished as the source of one or more of the rivers that 
glorify the state. In North Park the North Platte be- 
gins its course. In Middle Park, which is much larger 

45 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

than the State of Delaware, the Grand and the Gunnison 
start on their impetuous courses. South Park is nearly 
as large as Middle Park, and from it flow the Arkansas 
and the South Platte. A curious fact concerning the 
beginning of these two streams is that both flow from 
Palmer Lake, though in opposite directions. From the 
nearly flat surface of San Luis Park — which, geologists 
say, must have been at one time the bed of an inland sea 
— flows the Eio Grande del Norte. 

These mountain parks are accessible not only by 
rail, but by some of the finest automobile roads in a state 
famous for such highways. Perhaps the most delight- 
ful of these lead to Eocky Mountain National Park, the 
only portion of the great natural park region so far 
taken over by the government. Rocky Mountain Park, 
which lies to the southeast of North Park, and to the 
northeast of Middle Park, borrows from both features 
of marvelous beauty and adds tremendous advantages 
all its own. 

Those who would seek Eocky Mountain Park from 
Denver by highway have choice of three routes. One 
of these, by Longmont and Lyons, leads through the 
St. Vrain canyon and crosses the mountains. The 
Boulder route is by way of "Ward, and crosses the main 
range of the Rockies. But the choicest route of the 
three is by way of Loveland, and through nearly twenty- 
five miles of the canyon of Thompson River. Wherever 
possible the roadbed through the canyon was placed 
on the north side of the stream, that it might have the 
benefit of the sun. It would be difficult to find a high- 
way that provides for the motorist in three hours 
greater delight than the Thompson River road. 

There were none of these roads in the days of 

4« 



IN NATURE'S GARDENS 

early visitors, but many of them found their way 
to the region of delight that called forth the praise 
of such travelers as Helen Hunt Jackson, Isabella Bird 
Bishop, Horace Greeley and Samuel Bowles. (Joel 
Estes, a pioneer who made his home within the limits 
of the park, gave his name to its one hundred thousand 
acres of meadow and mountain, lake and river, nestling 
in an amphitheatre of the Eockies. 

Approach this gem of Colorado mountains as one 
will, it offers an enrapturing vision. From the ridge on 
the north the view is down fifteen hundred feet into the 
valley of the Thompson Eiver. From the plains to the 
southeast the dominating feature of the view is Sheep 
Mountain. From the adjoining Wind River Valley 
the eye takes in the majestic slope of seven thousand 
feet to the summit. And from the summit of Table 
Mountain, some miles northwest of the park, there is a 
prospect that is more splendid than any of the others. 

The park is dominated by Long's Peak, named for 
Major S. H. Long, the explorer, more than one hundred 
feet higher than Pike's Peak, from whose granite top 
can be seen the smoke of Denver, fifty miles away, as 
well as summits of the Pike's Peak region. The heights 
east of Cheyenne in Wyoming, and mountains far to the 
west are plainly visible. It was the view toward this 
royal height that led Isabella Bird Bishop to declare, 
''Never, nowhere, have I seen anything to equal the 
view into Estes Park." 

But Estes Park did not include enough to suit Enos 
A. Mills. For years he urged the creation of a larger 
park which, while appropriating the best of Estes, 
should include also the marvelous region immediately 
to the west. He succeeded in January, 1915, when the 

47 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Rocky Mountain National Park was created, with an 
area of three hundred and sixty-five square miles. 
Thirty years of residence at the foot of Long's Peak 
prepared Mills to be one of those whom Secretary of 
the Interior, Franklin Lane, once called the pioneers 
whose love made of the region a temple and a shrine. 

Those who seek variety should turn their feet toward 
what this persistent love of Mills has made a natural 
shrine. In addition to other things which they will ex- 
pect to find, they will discover glaciers and terminal 
moraines and glacial lakes. They will find mysterious 
forests and wonderfully beautiful flowers. Everywhere 
they turn there will be seen evidences of the activity 
of the busy beaver, whose dams are across the water of 
many streams, and if they delight in hunting they will 
behold on every hand evidences of mountain game that 
will add attraction to the wild. 

It is a long way from National Mountain Park to 
Mesa Verde Park, the second of the Colorado reserva- 
tions so far made by the United States Government ; but 
the journey, whether made by rail or by the Park to 
Park Highway, which is to connect all the National 
Parks of the West, is crowded so full of varied and 
satisfying visions that the distance is forgotten. The 
highway leads through the heart of San Juan Moun- 
tains to the fertile valleys of Montezuma County, whose 
lands were irrigated by the Indians, long before the 
first explorers turned their steps toward Colorado. 

Mancos is the gateway to Mesa Verde, the green 
tableland whose waters were discovered in December, 
1888, by Richard and Alfred Wetherell, cattlemen from 
Mancos, who pushed into the Mesa by way of one of the 
green canyons that cut the surface in every direction. 

48 



IN NATURE'S GARDENS 

These men were familiar with cliff dwellings of a sort, 
having seen them in the Mancos Canyon, discovered in 
1874. But they were not prepared for the startling 
vision of the homes of the Indians of many centuries 
ago perched high up on the cliffs of the canyon in which 
they found themselves. Eagerly they made further 
investigations, and, when they carried word of their 
discovery back to Mancos, there was great curiosity 
as to the ruins. 

Almost at once two hundred of the women of Colo- 
rado began the fight that was to continue for nearly 
twenty-five years for the preservation of the Mesa. 
They organized the Colorado Cliff Dwellers' Associa- 
tion, and did not rest until, in 1906, Congress created the 
Mesa Verde National Park. And when they discovered 
that the sixty-five miles of the reservation did not 
include the precious relics of the past, they persevered 
until the act creating the park was amended so as to 
take in ''all prehistoric ruins that are situated within 
five miles of the boundaries." Thus the park was 
enlarged to 274 square miles. 

At first the approach to the park was over a rocky 
road difficult even for the rider of the most sure-footed 
steed, but in recent years a fine government highway 
has been constructed from Mancos, twenty-eight miles 
to the Mesa. For three hours this road leads the trav- 
eler by motor up from the plain to the Mancos Canyon, 
then for many miles along the edge of the tableland far 
above the green valley. The grade is never greater 
than eight per cent., and the road is wide except between 
two points where there are telephone boxes, for the com- 
pulsory use of tourists, in accordance with the follow- 
ing peremptory order : 

4 49 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Persons approaching Point Lookout Grade in either 
direction must stop at telephone box and call office 
at Mancos, to be sure the grade is clear of vehicles, as 
they cannot pass on the grade without danger. 

From Point Lookout, 8248 feet high, Ute Mountain 
may be seen with its added height of nearly two thou- 
sand feet, as well as the fertile Montezuma valley, where 
the Pueblo Indians had irrigating ditches that made 
the region fruitful. Traces of the old irrigation works 
have been found in out-of-the-way places. 

The plateau slopes toward the south, and is cut by 
numerous small canyons which lead tributary streams 
to the Mancos Eiver. Hidden high up on the rocky walls 
of the canyon are the ruined community houses of the 
Indians, their watch towers, and their granaries. Cliff 
Palace, the village discovered by the cattlemen, in 1888, 
is the largest of the ruins. Here twenty-three distinct 
clans had their abode. Spruce Tree House, named be- 
cause of a large spmce tree growing in front of it at the 
time of its discovery, was the home of perhaps three 
hundred people. 

Almost directly south of Spruce Tree House, and 
near the southern limit of the park, the remarkable dis- 
covery of the Sun Temple was made in 1915. When 
Dr. J. W. Fewkes reported to the Indian Department 
the finding and excavating of the temple, he said he 
was convinced that it was built about 1300 a.d. His 
estimate was based on study of a. red cedar tree which 
was growing when he began work near the summit of 
the highest wall in the temple annex. The tree was 
killed in the process of excavating, for its roots pene- 
trated the adjacent rooms. When it was cut down, 
the superintendent of the near-by Montezuma National 

60 




U(i THOMPSON CANYON, ()\ I III W \1 JO HOCKY MOUNTAIN 
NATIONAT, I'ARK 




SPRUCE TREK HOUSE, MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK. 
ONCE CONTAINED 114 ROOMS 



200 FEET LONG, 




RAINBOW BRIDGE, SAN JOSE COUNTY, UJAH 
(As a guide to the size of the bridge, note horse in left foreground) 



IN NATURE'S GARDENS 

Forest counted three hundred and sixty annual rings. 
But the tree grew on a mound of ruined wall, so it 
was thought wise to add at least two hundred and fifty 
years for the period of the construction of the temple, 
its use, and its faUing into ruins. 

In the Montezuma Forest, whose headquarters are 
at Mancos, nearly seven hundred thousand acres are set 
aside for the preservation of just such trees. And this 
great forest has in it but one-twentieth of the national 
forest lands of Colorado, whose caretakers would agree 
emphatically with words written by Horace Greeley, 
after his study of Colorado mountains and forests : 

I have no blind horror of cutting trees. Any fairly 
grown forest can always spare trees, and be benefited 
by their removal. But I protest most earnestly against 
the reckless waste involved in cutting off and burning 
over our forests. In regions which are all woods, 
ground must of course be cleared for cultivation; but 
many a farmer goes on slashing and burning long after 
he should begin to be saving of his timber. . . . 
Protracted, desolating drouth, scorching winds, and the 
failure of delicate fruits, like the peach and fine pears, 
are part of the penalty we pay for depriving our fields 
and gardens of the genial, hospitable protection 
of forests. 

The visitor to Mesa Verde, after pausing to learn 
some of the lore of the foresters of Montezuma, will 
be ready for a second trip offered by Mancos, to a region 
wild and desolate, but so beautiful in its desolation that 
it is attracting many visitors, in spite of the fact that it 
is not yet accessible by rail, and that the roads approach- 
ing it leave much to be desired. This is the region of 
the Natural Bridges in San Juan County, over the line 

51 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

in Utah, wonders known only since 1903, when a mining 
engineer and a cattleman discovered the first of the 
three gigantic bridges whose description has staggered 
even those most accustomed to tremendous figures. 

Montezuma Highway from Mancos is identical with 
the road to Mesa Verde for some miles. Not far from 
Point Lookout it continues to the west to Cortez and 
Bluff, then to the Natural Bridges. The distance 
to these huge marvels is about one hundred and 
thirty miles. 

In March, 1903, a cattleman told Horace J. Long 
that he had caught a distant glimpse of a wonderful 
bridge in a canyon not two days' journey from the 
Colorado River. Mr. Long persuaded him to lead the 
way to the place, and after a journey whose difficulty 
can be imagined only by those who have pushed through 
a parched country, in spite of quicksands and interfer- 
ing willow and scrub oak and twisted cottonwoods, they 
came within sight of the first of the monolith curiosities 
of which they were in search. 

When word of the discovery was taken to the outside 
world, the Commercial Club of Salt Lake City sent an 
expedition of seven men into the almost inaccessible 
region to secure full information of the newest attrac- 
tion in that most interesting state. At last the ex- 
plorers came to White Canyon and its tributary, Arm- 
strong Canyon, where they stood in amazement before 
the colossal bridges of nature's own building, so much 
larger than the Natural Bridge of Virginia that the 
favorite haunt of the pioneers of the Old Dominion 
seems like a toy in comparison. 

Edwin Bridge, the smallest of the three discovered, 
lies across Armstrong Canyon. Its span is 194 feet, 

52 



IN NATURE'S GARDENS 

and it is 108 feet above the bed of the canyon. At the 
top it is 35 feet wide, while the arch at the centre is 
ten feet thick. 

"I am the first white man who has ever ridden over 
this bridge," was the proud boast of Mr. Long, who 
startled the world by telling of the wonders of 
the canyon. 

Three miles down Armstrong Canyon from Edwin 
Bridge is White Canyon, spanned by Caroline Bridge, 
which Long's cattleman companion named for his wife. 
The distance at the ground between buttresses of this 
mighty bridge is 208^2 feet, or more than twice as wide 
as an unusually broad city street. It is 197 feet from 
the water that flows beneath its majestic arch to the 
center of the stone above. From here it is 125 feet more 
to the floor of the bridge. One observer has said of this 
floor, which is 127 feet wide, "an army could march 
over in columns of companies, and still leave room at 
the side for a continuous stream of artillery and bag- 
gage wagons." 

The third bridge is found several miles up White 
Canyon from the Caroline Bridge. Its proportions 
are even more tremendous. It has been calculated that 
if the Capitol at Washington were placed beneath the 
arch, there would be fifty-one feet between the top of 
the dome and the stone, and that if the tallest of 
California's Calaveras trees could be planted in the bed 
of the stream, thirty-two feet would separate the loftiest 
branch and the lower side of the arch. Mr. Long 
claimed the privilege of naming the bridge Augusta, in 
honor of his wife. 

Of this bridge the statement has been made: *'It is 
set in the midst of big things. The trees beneath are 

S3 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

giants of their kind, the cliffs roundabout are massive 
and towering, but the sweeping lines of the colossal 
bridge dominate everything, making the horsemen look 
like pigmies, and the great pines that cling to the abut- 
ments appear like shrubbery. It is of a light red hue, 
somewhat weather-stained in places, but glowing in 
color on the under side of the arch, where it is protected 
and where the cleavages are fresh. A sense of enor- 
mous strength pervades it, a sense that it has endured 
for ages, and will endure for ages yet to come." 

In canyons near the bridges are cliff-dwellings of the 
Pueblo Indians that would seem wonderful to anyone 
who has not first examined the Mesa Verde ruins, but 
the memory of those pueblos of the tributary canyon of 
the Mancos and the knowledge that not far away is the 
giant of all the bridges will hurry the sightseer on. 
The journey to a point sixteen miles below the junction 
of the San Juan and the Colorado is difficult, but it is 
well worth taking. 

A few venturesome explorers had passed along the 
Colorado Eiver at this point, but they were ignorant 
of the existence of a bridge four miles up on a canyon 
which entered the stream from the east. The discov- 
ery was made in 1908 by W. B. Douglass of the United 
States Land Office, who had been instructed to find a 
bridge of which whispers had come from Indian sources. 
Piute guides showed the way. When the bridge was 
reached one of them refused to pass under the arch. 
He explained the reason. The bridge was called Nonne- 
zosche, or the rainbow. It was supposed to represent 
the rainbow, or path of the sun, and no one who 
passed beneath was allowed to return unless he re- 
peated a form of prayer. ** Apparently he had for- 



IN NATURE'S GARDENS 

gotten the prayer and feared vengeance if he broke 
the prohibition." 

The Rainbow Bridge is 308 feet high, 278 feet be- 
tween abutments, and 20 feet thick in the narrowest 
part, but 42 feet thick at the center of the arch. The 
canyon spanned by it extends from Navaho Mountain 
northward to the Colorado. It can be seen from the top 
of the mountain, but at that distance it appears to be 
a tiny arch indeed. Thirty-five miles over difficult 
country separate the lofty observer from this greatest 
marvel of all the region, and two days are required 
to make the journey. 

Rainbow Bridge is in the Indian Reservation, and 
it has been made a National Monument, so that it is free 
of access to all. The three bridges near Mancos also 
constitute a National Monument. 

Surely it will not be long till the canyons of the 
Natural Bridges are recognized resorts for tourists. 
When a railroad spur is built to them thousands will 
turn aside every season to inspect the great arches and 
speculate on the strange people who dwelt in the cliffs 
so long ago. 



CHAPTER V 

IN GARDENS OF MAN'S DEVISING 
THE IRRIGATED LANDS OF COLORADO 

ONCE it was thought in Colorado that gold and 
silver were the only products of the country 
worth considering. Some pioneers hinted 
that the soil was capable of producing enormous crops, 
hut this enthusiasm did not receive much encourage- 
ment. However, folks began to open their eyes in 1863 
because of John Eussell's experience with his potato 
crop not far from Denver. Not long after the tubers 
were in the ground the Indians drove him away. After 
several months he returned to find his crop doing well. 
Then came a dry spell, and the grower was so discour- 
aged that when a man rode by on a pony the offer was 
made to trade the potatoes for the pony. "But how 
could I get away from this country without a pony?" 
the horseman said, as he rode on. Then the showers 
came, and the potatoes flourished. The product sold for 
$22 a hundred pounds in the farmer's fun'ow, or $26 a 
hundred pounds at Denver. Total receipts for the crop 
he had proposed to trade for a pony were $11,600. 

Such experiences began to open the eyes of the 
pioneer to the fact that it was not necessary to be con- 
tent with conditions like those described by Washington 
Irving in ''Astoria." The country to the east of the 
Continental Divide he spoke of as the land where no man 
could permanently abide, for in certain seasons of the 
year there was no food either for the hunter or his steed. 
The herbage was parched and withered; the streams 

56 



IN GARDENS OF MAN'S DEVISING 

dried up; the buffalo, the elk, and the deer wandered 
to distant parts, leaving behind them a vast unin- 
habited solitude. 

To correct such untoward conditions two things 
were needed— an unfaiUng supply of water that would 
make the toiler on the land independent of the sparse 
and irreg-ular rain, and a method of conquering the 
insidious poisoning of the soil by alkali. 

The rich country about Fort Collins furnishes illus- 
trations of the effective methods employed to combat 
these difficulties. First came the beneficent irrigation 
that has transformed so many districts from waste 
lands to productive gardens. But in the train of irriga- 
tion came alkali poisoning to lands that were thought 
to be immune. A farmer might congratulate himself 
that he had no alkali on his place. Trees flourished 
everywhere, grain grew luxuriantly, and the entire 
ranch was a scene of beauty. Then, all at once, a change 
came. Perhaps there was a spot in a cornfield that 
refused to bear, or a few trees in the center of a flourish- 
ing orchard would die. 

The explanation was simple but disconcerting. Far 
down beneath the surface was a white chemical, a solu- 
tion of calcium sulphate, that was harmless so long as 
it could be kept beneath the surface. But as water 
evaporated from the surface, water farther down was 
drawn upward. With it came the alkali solution. After 
the water reached the surface, it evaporated, and left 
a deadly alkaline crust that seemed for a time to sound 
the death-knell of the hopes of orchards and gardens. 

There were those who said that the lands could not 
be redeemed. But the government engineers believed 
they could conquer the alkali. At least they proposed 

57 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

to try. They persuaded a number of ranohmen near 
Fort Collins to let them make the attempt, and to the 
surprise of everyone but the engineers the attempt was 
successful. The method used seemed simple. By ditch- 
ing and tiling, by repeated harrowing and flooding, the 
alkali was washed from the surface and from the soil 
beneath the surface. So well was this done that men 
became eager to buy thousands of acres of land that 
once could have been had for a song. The cost of 
reclaiming an acre was only from ten to forty dollars, 
an expenditure that seemed out of all proportion to the 
wonderful results secured in the threatened region. 

The most spectacular results of man's efforts to 
harness the forces of nature for the changing of a desert 
to a garden appear in Western Colorado, not far from 
the Utah line. There, in Grrand Valley, and in the 
Uncompahgre Valley, associations of fruit growers and 
farmers, assisted later by the state, succeeded in the 
placing of fruitful orchards and bountiful crops on 
thousands of acres that seemed to be at one tima a hope- 
less sagebrush desert. But not until the Eeclamation 
Act of 1902 was passed, when the United States Gov- 
ernment began its beneficent work for valleys crying 
aloud for water, did the desert really begin to blossom 
as the rose. 

Grand Valley first attracted the attention of the 
homemakers. In 1881 settlers rushed in when the Ute 
Indians were removed to Utah. By 1886 45,000 acres 
had been irrigated, and the work halted because of the 
great expense of the gravity canal that would be re- 
quired to irrigate from sixty to ninety thousand acres 
more just as promising. 

When the engineers of the Reclamation Service be- 

58 




IN GUNNISON CANYON, COLORADO 



IN GARDENS OF MAN'S DEVISING 

gan work in 1913 they had conceived a daring plan to 
divert the water of the Grand River into a canal system 
on the north side of the river, by a dam about eight miles 
from Palisade. By this means lands west of Grand 
Junction would be cared for. It was hoped that, by a 
tunnel through the mountain, water could be carried 
over to the sagebrush lands of Eastern Utah, but when 
it was learned that the valleys there were two or three 
hundred feet higher up, this part of the project 
was abandoned. 

Grand Valley, where the dam is located, is thirty 
miles long. For more than one hundred miles the 
river rushes between high canyon walls, from the time 
it enters Gore Canyon near Kremmline until it reaches 
Palisade. Then, after the open interval of Grand Val- 
ley, comes another canyon which hides the waters until 
they reach Green River, Utah. 

It has been pointed out that the engineers had to 
solve the difficult problem of raising the level of the 
river at low stages sufficiently to send 1425 cubic feet 
of water per second into the main canal, and yet at high 
water to pass a flow of 50,000 cubic feet per second 
without raising the water level to a point where it 
would endanger the roadbed of the Denver and Rio 
Grande Railway. How completely the problem was 
solved may be understood by those who visit the dam at 
Palisade, then survey the astonishing orchards of cher- 
ries and apples and peaches and pears, the luxuriant 
vineyards, the fields of strawberries and raspberries, 
and the lands devoted to crops more prosaic but just 
as necessary. 

Southeast of Grand Valley is the valley whose land- 
owners did the best they could with the uncertain flow 

59 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

of the Uncompahgre Eiver, at the same time casting 
longing eyes at the nearly parallel Gunnison River, 
whose unfailing water supply would mean the complete 
metamorphosis of the valley, if only it could be brought 
to them. And there was no way of finding whether this 
could be done unless some one should first explore the 
terrible depths of that thirty-mile stretch of canyon. 

Who would do this 1 No wonder men hesitated. But 
there were five heroes who, thinking of the great good 
that might be accomplished through their hardihood, 
resolved to make the attempt. 

These men, W. W. Torrence, government engineer, 
and four assistants, undertook what was as dangerous 
as anything ever done by a government employee. They 
Avould have been willing to be let down by a rope into 
the canyon at the point where it was proposed to have 
the entrance to the tunnel, but everybody knew that 
no rope would stand the strain of passing over the 
jagged edges of rock encountered during the descent 
of more than a half mile. There was only one way — 
to enter the canyon thirty miles above and descend to 
the spot in question. 

The brave men started. At intervals along the top 
of the canyon walls watchers were stationed whose duty 
it was to peer doAvn on the explorers and send word to 
their homes of their safety — or their death. After 
climbing to the river, the explorers pushed into the 
water stout canvas boats stretched on oak supports. 
Then began days and nights of terror. 

Almost in darkness, with spray dashing all about 
them so that they were wet continually, compelled to 
yell at one another because of the great noise made 
by the cataracts, the heroes pushed on their way. 



IN GARDENS OF MAN'S DEVISING 

Waterfalls, rapids, rocks, whirlpools, succeeded each 
other with bewildering rapidity. Sometimes in the 
boats, again in the water, still again climbing over the 
rocks, while ropes held them fast together and to their 
precious boats, they advanced slowly and painfully. 
The first day less than a mile was covered. 

The terrors and the hardships of the next few days 
are indescribable. By day they fought boulders and 
rapids, eddies and whirlpools. By night they longed 
for the sleep which they could not secure; they were 
too weary to rest. 

The watchers on the edge of the canyon lost sight of 
them. For five days they saw not a sign of life. Giving 
up the heroes for dead, friends prepared to catch their 
bodies in wdre nets put into the water at the mouth of 
the canyon. Just then they caught a glimpse of 
them alive. 

For three weeks the travelers toiled on. Then they 
were utterly exhausted. Their food was nearly gone. 
But they did not give up until the day when they were 
able to travel only one hundred yards, when the walls, 
perpendicular, glassy, were twenty-five hundred, feet 
high, and only twenty-eight feet apart. They had come 
to what they called ''The Falls of Sorrows. '' They 
could not go on. How could they escape ! They bowed 
their heads and asked God to help them. 

God helped them. He led them to a fissure in the 
canyon wall, up which they decided to climb. At times 
the chosen way was almost perpendicular, but they kept 
on. Tied together, with the spike-shod tripod legs of 
their surveying transits for staffs, they painfully picked 
their way, sticking to the precipice edge like flies. 

Night found them still five hundred feet from the 

61 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

top. *' Their lips were purple and swollen to triple 
size for want of water," their story has been told. 
' ' Their hands were cut, the palms were raw from con- 
tact with jagged rocks and from the chafing of the rope. 
Eyes were swollen and bloodshot and faces were covered 
with a quarter-inch-thick mask, where a layer of 
rock dust had settled and had been baked in 
with the perspiration." 

On they went in the dark. For five tedious hours 
they persisted. A i last, bruised and almost lifeless, they 
were among their friends. 

They were told that this experience should satisfy 
them. But as time passed, the leader of the first expe- 
dition, seeing still the vision of a desert valley made to 
blossom as the rose, took with him A. L. Fellows, an- 
other engineer, and entered the canyon. As a substitute 
for the useless boats, a rubber air-mattress, four by six 
feet, was taken along. On this all their equipment was 
placed. The men waded or swam beside the mattress. 
Thus they covered fourteen miles in two weeks, after 
untold hardships reaching the Falls of Sorrows. 

Days more of privation and marvelous escape. Then 
the men paused on the brink of a precipice over which 
the river disappeared. What was beyond? Did the 
river go underground! They could not tell. The only 
thing to do Avas to go over the falls. Fellows went first, 
and disappeared. Torrence followed in the raft. He 
found Fellows lying exhausted on a shelf of rock beyond 
the falls. 

Hours went by before the men were able to move. 
Then, hungry after sixteen hours ' abstinence from food, 
they ate their last spoonful of baked beans and, scarcely 
able to stand, began taking notes and snapping photo- 



IN GARDENS OF MAN'S DEVISING 

graphs of the spot. Just then a mountain sheep passed 
them. They caught it, and ate it as they killed it. In 
the strength of that food the companions went on into 
dangers even greater than those they had passed. Once 
they had to throw themselves into the river as it foamed 
through a dark tunnel through a mass of broken rock. 
Strange to say, they came out safely, and they were 
soon at the end of their thirty-mile trip. 

Then came the building of a road into the canyon, 
that machinery might be taken there. Finally work 
began at the same time from points on opposite sides 
of the mountain to be pierced. 

The driving of the tunnel six miles long would have 
been a herculean task even under the most favorable 
circumstances. But conditions were far from favorable. 
There were cave-ins and springs of hot and cold water 
broke in on the workers. Once when an enormous 
flow of water was tapped, carbon-dioxide in great quan- 
tities sent the men to the surface in a panic. Even after 
three weeks it was still impossible to work, and it was 
necessary to construct a ventilating shaft about seven 
hundred feet deep, through the rock, for air. 

The first water for irrigation was delivered through 
the tunnel in 1910. Next came the completion of the 
dam in the canyon of the Gunnison for the diversion of 
the stream into the mountain passageway, and the 
eleven-mile canal from the western portal of the tunnel 
to the valley where more than one hundred thousand 
acres had waited long for the unfailing water supply. 
The tunnel and dam can be reached without difficulty 
from Morton, one of the chief towns of the smil- 
ing valley. 

It is difficult for those who see the lands as they 

63 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

are to-day to realize what a ohange lias been wrought 
here by irrigation. However, it will be necessary to 
look on other valleys where the beneficent work of the 
reclamation engineer has not yet been done to appre- 
ciate the tremendous transformation accomplished in 
Uncompahgre Valley. Those who have made the com- 
parison will be in position to smile at the picturesquely 
contrasted titles of magazine articles that have been 
written about the work of the Reclamation Bureau. 
Look at some of these, chosen at random : 

The Drama of the Desert; Is Uncle Sam Turning 
Socialist! The Service that Makes the Desert Blos- 
som; Why Irrigation Projects Fail; Uncle Sam's Ro- 
mance with Science and Soil ; The Eden Makers ; How 
Irrigation Service is Robbing the Settlers; Reclama- 
tion's Part in the Pork Barrel; Our Paternal Uncle; 
The Human Factor in Industry; Uncle Sam, Law 
Breaker. 

"What different points of view are taken by poet and 
politician, practical man and demagogue ! 



CHAPTER VI 
ONE THOUSAND MILES THROUGH THE ROCKIES 

TO Pike and Fremont and others of the early 
pathfinders Colorado proved a labyrinth almost 
impassable, but the way has been made easy to 
their successors who wish to pierce to the heart of the 
ranges, climb the passes and the peaks and solve the ap- 
pealing mysteries of the alluring Rockies. The ingenu- 
ity of the railway surveyor and engineer and the deter- 
mination of the builder of highways have made 
accessible practically all the marvels of a region that is 
ever calling to the adventurous to discover the ' '■ some- 
thing lost behind the ranges." The search is wonder- 
fully aided by the freedom offered by the nineteen 
monster National Forests which stretch over a large 
portion of the mountains. Everywhere through these 
forests lead roads and bridle paths that make easily 
accessible points that otherwise would be forbidden ter- 
ritory. Specially notable in this respect, and so easily 
explored, is the Pike Forest, whose million acres stretch 
from Colorado Springs to Denver, and include Pike's 
Peak, with numberless other attractions any one of 
which would make a region remarkable. 

But Colorado is not a land of a single high peak, 
or even a dozen or a score. It is difficult to realize 
that within its bounds are at least one hundred and 
eighty mountains higher than twelve thousand feet, 
while there are more than one hundred and ten moun- 
tains higher than thirteen thousand feet each. Of the 
fifty-four summits in the entire country with heights 

5 65 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

greater than fourteen thousand feet, to which definite 
names have been assigned, forty-two are in Colorado. 
In an advertising booklet, which, after the fashion of 
its kind, is characterized by florid statement, perhaps 
the most startling sentence is given as a fine print foot- 
note to a pictorial map of mountain peaks : ' ' There are 
many peaks between 13,500 and 14,500 feet in height, 
which are unnamed, and therefore are not given on 
the map.'* 

And all this within an easy journey from any part 
of the United States ! Those who wish to see mountains 
do not need to wait until they can go to the Alps or to 
the Selkirks. There is a point in the eastern Selkirks of 
Canada where the tourist is told that he can see a dozen 
great peaks. But there are points in Colorado where he 
can do much better than this. From the Marble Pavil- 
ion in Cheesman Park, Denver, for instance — standing 
at the time on a height greater than that of the proud- 
est summit in Scotland — one can see from forty to 
fifty named mountains, from Pike's Peak in the south 
to Mount Ypsilon in the north, a distance of one hun- 
dred and thirty miles. 

Fifty-one miles northwest of Denver is Long's Peak, 
where Enos A. Mills has made his home for years. From 
this mountain he goes on exploring trips among the 
hundreds of other peaks in the state ; for, as state snow- 
observer, it is his pleasure to circle here and there 
studying conditions and triumphing over difficulties 
as only a confirmed mountain lover can triumph. Once, 
while twelve thousand five hundred feet high, he was 
overtaken by a blinding storm, deadly cold. To 
pause long would mean death. A friend told of 
his experiences: 

66 



THROUGH THE ROCKIES 

He started for the head of a gorge, thinking to 
chmb down it to the nearest timber. Nothing definite 
could be seen. The clouds on the snowy surface and 
tlie electrified air gave the eye only optical illusions, 
in tlie midst of these illusions he walked out on a snow 
cornice overhanging a precipice. The snow gave way 
beneath him. He was buried in it. Then it ceased 
moving downward: the mass of snow with his body 
Had tallen on a narrow ledge, and caught there. When 
He thrust his head from the mass of snow and looked 
around him, he was appalled to see the terrible height of 
the precipice on the face of which he was hanging 
It took him two hours to work his way back the twenty 
feet to the top. ^ 

Directly west of Denver is the overpowering bulk 
of Gray's Peak, while near-by, on Argentine Pass, is one 
of the world's highest wagon roads ; its altitude is about 
thirteen thousand feet. To Samuel Bowles, traveler of 
1868, this was one of the outstanding sights of the moun- 
tains. ''No Swiss Mountain view carries such majestic 
sweep of distance, such sublime combinations of height 
and depth and breadth ; such uplifting into the province 
of God, ' ' he wrote. ' ' It was not man, but God, that was 
about, before, in us." 

Not so far from Gray's Peak that famous bit of 
railway engineering, the Georgetown Loop, shows how 
one corps of railway builders solved a difficult problem 
of mountain engineering. Another world-famed marvel 
is near the southern limit of the Denver prospect— the 
Eoyal Gorge, just far enough to the west of Canon City 
to afford an opportunity to traverse the attractive Sky 
Line Drive, built ''on honor" by convicts from the State 
Penitentiary, on the sharp summit of a limestone ridge. 
This ridge dominates on one side the valley where the 

67 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

town nestles in its orchards nearly a thousand feet be- 
low, as well as that new triumph of scenic roadbuilding, 
the new Phantom Canyon Highway to Cripple Creek. 
On the other side of the summit, across the valley, is the 
Eoyal Gorge Park, a district eight miles square which 
Congress gave to Caiion City for its own particular 
breathing spot. Within the park the Sky Line drive has 
its terminus, on the brink of the Eoyal Gorge. It is 
not enough to see the stupendous chasm from below, 
where the railroad crosses the stream with the gorge 
at a point where it was necessary to hang a bridge from 
the rocky walls; the picture should be completed by 
peering down nearly three thousand feet to the silver 
thread of the Arkansas and the toy railroad by its side. 

Beyond the ten miles of the passage of the railroad 
through the gorge and the Grand Canyon of the Arkan- 
sas — a passage made necessary, in the face of the vocif- 
erously shouted ''impossible!" of doubters, by the 
clamor of Leadville for connection with the world of 
commerce — is Salida, a town that rejoices in an exten- 
sive mountain view that includes the Sangre de Cristo 
Range, the Collegiate Eange, whose lofty mounts 
Princeton and Yale dwell in peace with even loftier 
Harvard and Mount Ouray and Mount Shavano, dis- 
tinguished, among other reasons, because between them 
lies Marshall Pass, where the narrow gauge line makes 
eleven loops in the course of its serpentine passage. 

Between Salida and Leadville there are always in 
sight so many mountains that it is almost impossible 
to keep track of them. From Leadville, Mount Mas- 
sive, the highest peak in Colorado, is visible in surpass- 
ing majesty, ten miles southwest of the city, while about 
it are glaciated peaks of the Sagauche Range, where lie 

68 




ROYAL GORGE FROM 



COLORADO 




THE SKY LINE DRIVE, CANON CITY, COLORADO 




MOUNT OF THE HOLY CROSS, COLORADO 



THROUGH THE ROCKIES 

hidden blue lakes and sparkling cascades innumerable. 

The famous Mount of the Holy Cross, named be- 
cause of the cross ravines near its summit filled with 
never-melting snow, may be reached from Leadville, but 
a better point of approach for those who wish to become 
familiar with it is from Red Cliff, near Eagle River 
Canyon, where the tracks of the railroad are on both 
sides of the stream, the engineers not having found 
room for both on one side, and where, from the track, 
the traveler may look up nearly two thousand feet and 
see the black mouths of many mines, ''like dormer 
windows in the granite mountain roof." 

Eagle Canyon has a surprise up its sleeve, for, hid- 
den here in the fastnesses of the mountain, are some of 
Colorado's most fertile lands. Eagle Canyon leads to 
the more forbidding Canyon of the Grand and this in 
turn shows the way to Glenwood Springs, where the Ute 
Indians turned for healing when their beloved Manitou 
had been left behind forever. 

There is another reminder of Manitou some dis- 
tance farther on, beyond the smiling region of irrigated 
Grand Valley and prosperous Grand Junction — the 
highly colored sandstone monoliths, hundreds of feet 
high, within canyons whose towering walls are the 
frame of these features of the fourteen-thousand-acre 
Colorado National Monument. This monument owes to 
the tireless efforts of John Otto its inclusion among the 
playgrounds of the Nation. 

There are so many notable canyons in Colorado, it is 
impossible to name them all. But each has its distinc- 
tive features. South of Grand Junction and east of 
Montrose some of these water-worn fissures have sup- 
plied many railroad engineers with problems that satis- 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

fied even their rapacious appetites for conquest. In the 
Black Canyon of the Gunnison — why was it called black 
when it presents an aspect so pleasing by reason of its 
many-colored rocks? — they found the combination of 
tumbling stream and scattered boulders, of rocky walls 
and narrow ledges, that gave them delight in their work 
of mountain conquest. ' * The canyon is but a cleft in the 
heart of a mountain," an early traveler described it 
vividly. ''Cleave Mount Washington from summit to 
base with a mighty stroke, and there will be made a 
gorge in the mountain resembling, in a sickly way, the 
Black Canyon of the Gunnison. ' ' 

To the south of Gunnison are the mysterious San 
Juan mountains, in whose heart is Lake City, a town 
built by the side of one of the many branches of the 
Gunnison, which meanders away delightfully into the 
mountain fastnesses. 

Some of the mountains reached easily from Lake 
City are as distinctive as any to be found in Colorado. 
Uncompahgre Peak looks like one of the Himalayas, 
while Whitecross Mountain, whose tree-clad slopes are 
surmounted by a bare rock peak, with a broken cone 
on one side, is marked by a quartz cross on its side that 
is responsible for the name. Eed Cloud Mountain, loft- 
ier than Whitecross, does not look so high from some 
directions because its slopes are more gradual, but its 
majestic proportions become more impressive as they 
are approached. 

South of Lake City there is an alluring region as 
yet unconquered by the railroad, though it is ap- 
proached by half-a-dozen spurs. Each of the spurs 
seems to be pointing a finger to scenes it has not reached, 
but whose attractions it knows. Here, in the most 

70 



THROUGH THE ROCKIES 

rugged region of the state, there is opportunity for 
many excursions to scenes of surpassing interest 
and grandeur. 

From Creede one of the spurs calls across the moun- 
tains to Wheeler National Monument, where are set 
apart 320 acres of curious, majestic erosions that seem 
like a miniature Canyon of the Colorado, and to the 
near-by Wagon Wheel Gap, named because of the dis- 
covery on this alluring site by the Rio Grande del 
Norte of a number of old wagon wheels left behind 
by Fremont, the explorer, at the close of the fearful 
winter spent there by his hardy pioneers when their 
leader attempted to cross the Rockies at the wrong 
season, in the face of the warnings of Kit Carson. 

To the west of Lake City, at the end of another 
spur, Ouray has a commanding location on the bank 
of the Uncompahgre River, and at the beginning of the 
remarkable twenty-four-mile mountain road to Silver- 
ton. For the first twelve miles to Red Mountain to^vn 
this road looks far down into gorges and gulches from 
shelves which have been blasted for it with patient cun- 
ning. On heights like these, where it is possible to see 
for seemingly endless miles in the clear air, the traveler 
will feel like shouting for the joy of living. He may 
try to repress his exuberance, for fear of what some 
fellow traveler may think of his inexperience, until he 
learns that the companion is as eager as he to rejoice. 
Then what a jubilee they can have together ! 

Between Ouray and Silverton many more of the 
tremendous peaks beckon compellingly. It is not easy 
to pass them and return to the railroad that plays hide 
and seek with the southern boundary of the state, finally 
crossing the divide at Cumbres Pass, almost on the 

71 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

boundary line, then threading a precarious path fifteen 
hundred feet above Toltec Gorge, and passing among 
the monoliths of Phantom Curve. 

^'How could the road be built over such obstacles?" 
one is tempted to ask. A notable answer was given by 
Governor Hunt of Colorado who, with General Palmer, 
planned the Denver and Rio Grande. Once he was 
asked how he ever thought of getting a road over La 
Veta Pass, where the Veta Mountains are crossed near 
Alamosa, northeast of Cumbres. ''A mule taught me 
the trick,'* was the reply. ''General Palmer and I 
walked over La Veta Pass time and time again, anxious 
to build the line, but discouraged by every engineer in 
the country from attempting it. At last, one day, 
I saw a mule walking up the mountain. He did not go 
straight up, but went in a zigzag way. His movements 
suggested what we should do — ^wind back and forth up 
the mountain side." 



CHAPTER VII 
THROUGH THE LAND OF FOSSILS 

SOUTHERN Wyoming is the paradise of the fossil 
hunter. For good measure, the fossil regions be- 
gin east of the Wyoming country, and extend 
clear to the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. The eager 
scientist for whom a country is beautiful only accord- 
ing to the readiness of the rocks to yield secrets of past 
animal life has found, near Sydney, Nebraska, bones 
that told him of a strange horse that pranced over the 
plains many thousand years ago. To this horse has been 
given the awe-inspiring name chalicotheres. Its front 
feet were long, its hind legs were short, there were three 
toes on each foot and each toe ended in a great claw. 
But the chalicotheres could take pointers from the 
sandyoceras whose head was like that of an antelope, 
though it had four horns ; over the eyes were two horns 
that curved inward, and lower down, near the mouth, 
were smaller horns that curved outward. Companion 
animals of these awe-inspiring creatures were a camel 
about the size of a ship, a rhinoceros and a mastodon. 

Practice on the bones of such monsters gave the 
eager students of skeletons an appetite for the disclos- 
ures of Como Bluff, Wyoming, where they found the 
bones of a dinosaur more than seventy feet long. He 
walked on all fours, but he could rear himself upright 
in what must have seemed a most ridiculous fashion. 
His tail stretched thirty feet along the ground. Next 
was his upright body, twenty feet long, and his neck, 
extending twenty to twenty-four feet more, while the 

73 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

whole was crowned in ludicrous fashion by a head no 
larger than that of an ordinary horse. His weight must 
have been eighteen or twenty tons. He was named 
Brontosaurus, or thunder lizard. 

Three men were in the party that discovered the 
bones which, when put together, showed how this mighty 
creature must have looked. They were scientists sent 
out by a museum to look for fossils. At Medicine Bow 
they left the train and pushed on by wagon to the fossil 
grounds. It was an unattractive place in which they 
finally pitched their tents, but they knew that here, if 
anywhere, they would be able to make the discovery 
for which they had been planning. For here was the 
bed of the ancient lake where dinosaurs once made 
their home. 

At once the scientists began a careful search of the 
region for miles around. To most people there would 
have been no signs of fossils, but the trained men knew 
where and how to look for them. A slight indication on 
the surface of the rock might be enough to tell them that, 
buried in that rock, were bones whose scientific value 
was incalculable. Once no sign could have been found 
on the surface, but through many ages the rock had 
been worn away, and the bones have been exposed. 

No discoveries of any importance were made for 
many days. Discouraged, the men decided to move on 
unless some sign appeared. Then one of them saw, at 
the base of a bluff, the unmistakable mouth of a dino- 
saur. Near by he found signs of a section of the back- 
bone. He hurried to camp and told his exciting tale 
to his companions, who again had returned empty- 
handed from their scrutiny of the rocks. 

Next morning the three men, as well as the laborers 

74 



THROUGH THE LAND OF FOSSILS 

who accompanied them, were searching for other parts 
of the skeleton. When nothing further was found, they 
concluded that the body lay buried in the bluff. 

But the bluff was of solid rock. Then must they 
give up their search? They did not propose to turn 
back when what they sought was within their grasp. 
So they began the attack on the bluff. 

Before they had gone far they found enough of 
the skeleton to show that they were on the right track. 
They had to revise their estimate of the length of time 
necessary to complete the task. A tunnel must be 
blasted in the hard rock, and a year, perhaps two years, 
would pass before their work was done. 

It was impossible to remove the bones from their 
rocky bed, so great slabs of stone were quarried. In 
each slab was a portion of the skeleton. About this 
slab was wrapped a piece of burlap wet in plaster-of- 
Paris. As soon as the plaster hardened, the slab was 
put aside for transportation to the railroad station. 
Successive slabs were given numbers according to their 
location in the bluff, in order that, when the bones were 
removed from the rock, it might be possible to arrange 
them in order. 

The entire skeleton could not be found. This was 
not expected, for the searchers knew that in all proba- 
bility the body of the dinosaur was attacked by other 
greedy reptiles which succeeded in carrying away por- 
tions to other parts of the lake. 

Finally all the slabs were before other scientists 
in the distant museum. But the work was far from 
complete. They knew that before them stretched from 
one to three years' toil, chipping away at the slabs to 
separate fossil bones from the encasing stone. They 

75 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

faced their task with as much zeal as the scientists had 
shown in tunneling the Wyoming bluff. Great care was 
required, or the bones would be broken into small bits. 

But at last the work was done, and the erection of 
the skeleton was begun. The head was almost perfect. 
So was the great neck. A few ribs were lacking, but 
these were made from plaster-of-Paris. There was 
but one hind foot, yet it was easy to make another to 
match it. So the work proceeded, until at last the skele- 
ton was complete, ready for the daily procession of 
visitors who marvel not only at the creature which lived 
on the earth so long ago, but at the power of Him who 
preserved the skeleton in such wonderful manner. 

Another eager party of Princeton University scien- 
tists made a find near Bridger, not far from the Utah, 
line, after a long hunt, one day in 1884. They were about 
to give up thought of finding anything especially note- 
worthy when one of the party saw a jawbone with teeth 
sticking out of the base of a butte. To his joy the result 
was the uncovering of the most complete specimen ever 
discovered of the Mesonyx, a flesh-eating animal with 
peculiar claws. Probably it was not unlike the wolf in 
general appearance. The restoration to be seen at 
Princeton shows it was about twenty-two inches high 
and sixty-one inches from nose to tip of tail. This 
pioneer trailed over the Bad Lands so many thousand 
years ago that it is a weariness to count back to his time. 

In southwestern Wyoming are two stations on the 
Union Pacific Eailway that tell the story of more of 
these odd remains of an age long forgotten. There is 
Fish Cut, near Green Eiver, where fossil fishes are 
preserved in the rock, and Fossil, the resort of the 
hunters for curios, to satisfy the traveler. 

76 



THROUGH THE LAND OF FOSSILS 

Whoever named these stations must have felt that 
he should keep pace with those who had given titles to 
many of the localities on the line of the Union Pacific — 
which is also the route of the Lincoln Highway through 
Southern Wyoming. Perhaps no other bit of highway 
in the country has so large a proportion of really de- 
scriptive names as the seven-hundred-mile stretch from 
Julesburg, Colorado, to Ogden, Utah. 

Julesburg, for instance, was named when it was a 
station on Ben Holliday's stage line on the Overland 
Route to California. The representative of the trans- 
portation company at this point was known as Jules, 
and he was such an important personage that the settle- 
ment about the fort established for the protection of 
travelers from marauding Indians was called Jules- 
burg. In 1865, when the original settlement was burned 
by the Indians, it was rebuilt on another site. Later 
the towTi was twice removed to a new location, but the 
name of the pioneer was always retained. 

Julesburg was a bustling town in the days of the pio- 
neers, sharing with Cheyenne, later the picturesque 
capital of Wyoming, the reputation for wildness. Sioux 
braves on the warpath, as well as inmiense herds of 
buffalo, were drawn to the locality, and there was an 
endless procession of the white-topped wagons of the 
freighter and the homeseeker. F. A. Eoot, a messenger 
on the Overland Stage Line, counted in a single day's 
ride, east of Julesburg, 888 westbound wagons, drawn 
by 10,650 oxen, horses and mules. A road experience 
related by the same rider by stage, whose route from 
Atchison to Denver led through Julesburg, helps in 
the formation of a vivid picture of life as seen by the 
old town : 

77 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

An Atchison freighter had just pulled out with his 
ox train on Monday morning, a few minutes before the 
regular hour of departure for the stage-coach. I passed 
him on Eighth Street, then at the extreme western busi- 
ness portion of the city, and reached Denver in six days. 
Eemaining there two days I started on my return trip 
to Atchison. On my way I met and chatted briefly with 
my friend somewhere near the head waters of the Little 
Blue River, near the Divide, perhaps twenty-five miles 
southwest of Fort Kearney. I reached Atchison, re- 
maining a week. On my way west the next trip I passed 
my friend again on the South Platte. I reached Den- 
ver, stopping two days, then returned to Atchison on 
my regular trip, meeting his wagon on my way east. 
Eemaining another week in Atchison, I pulled out with 
the stage-coach, once more for the Colorado metropolis. 
Imagine my surprise when, within a few miles of Den- 
ver, I was greeted by the freighter's familiar voice. 
During the time he had been making his trip of 653 
miles, with his oxen, traveling every day except Sun- 
days, I had ridden five times across the plains, a dis- 
tance of 3265 miles, and had laid by eighteen days. 

A man of an entirely different sort, General W. T. 
Sherman, gave his name to a village on the highest point 
of the Laramie Eange crossed by the railroad, from 
which it is possible, under favorable conditions, to see 
Pikers Peak, one hundred and sixty-five miles south. 
When the railroad was built the rails were laid two 
miles north of Sherman, and a stone pyramid, sixty feet 
square and sixty feet high, was erected to Oliver and 
Oakes Ames, the brothers to whom credit is due for 
pushing through to completion the Union Pacific Rail- 
road; they persisted in the face of the opposition of 
railroad men who said that only a madman would think 
of building a railroad over a mountain eight thousand 
feet high. The great pile of cut stone is of special 

78 



THROUGH THE LAND OF FOSSILS 

interest because, when the railroad was removed so as 
to decrease the altitude two hundred and thirty-seven 
feet, the stones were taken down one by one and were 
carried on wagons to the new location where the pile 
was erected as before. An examination of the medal- 
lions of the brothers revealed the fact that the carving 
of that to Oliver Ames, on the northwest side, had been 
much worn by the storms of forty years, though that 
devoted to Oakes Ames, which faced the southwest, was 
as good as when the pyramid was new. 

Laramie perpetuates the famous Fort) Laramie, 
named for Jacques La Ramie, a French fur trader who 
visited the region long before the railroad was thought 
of. Visitors to the second city in Wyoming are 
attracted to the odd pinnacles and turrets and castel- 
lated crags at Red Buttes, a few miles south, which have 
been fashioned by erosion from the red sandstone cliffs. 

The ingenuity of those who like to account for things 
has been taxed by the town Medicine Bow, not far from 
the mountain of the same name. One explanation seems 
a little far-fetched, but it must be accepted for lack of 
a better. Some of the Indians were accustomed to go 
to the mountain to gather a favorite wood for their 
bows. Since ''anything that serves its purpose well 
is 'good medicine,^ "the name Medicine Bow was easily 
applied to the mountain, and after that to the town. 

That it is not difficult to gatoo far in ascribing names 
to the Indians is illustrated by the attempt of some 
recent map makers to fasten the name Seminole on the 
range of mountains north of G-renville, and fifty-three 
miles from Medicine Bow. Evidently they thought that 
previous map makers had omitted a letter when calling 
them Seminoe, and that they had been named after the 

79 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Seminole Indians, when the truth is that the Indians 
had nothing to do with them; they commemorate the 
prowess of Seminoe Lajeunesse, one of the French 
trappers of the early days. 

A much more picturesque character, James Bridger, 
gave his name to one of the last stations in Wyoming 
before the Utah line is crossed. As a trapper Bridger 
became so familiar with the country that when he was 
still a young man he was called 'Hhe old man of the 
mountains." He was the builder of Fort Bridger, and 
when a garrison of United States soldiers was sent 
there he became a guide and a scout. Once, while on 
the road, he met the first Mormons, bound for Utah. 
He did his best to discourage them from attempting to 
make a home near the Great Salt Lake. 

One of the exploring expeditions with which Bridger 
came in touch, that led by Howard Stansbury in 1849, 
was readier to listen to tales of the difficulties of the 
country; they had been made ready for such stories 
by difficulties they had seen for themselves. Once, when 
near Fort Laramie, the leader wrote : 

To-day we find additional and melancholy evidence 
of the difficulties encountered by those who are ahead 
of us. Before halting to noon, we passed eleven wagons 
that had been broken up, the spokes of the wheels taken 
to make pack-saddles, and the rest burned or otherwise 
destroyed. The roadbed was literally strewn with 
wheels that have been thrown away. Bar-iron and 
steel, large blacksmiths' anvils and bellows, crow-bars, 
drills, augers, gold-washers, chisels, axes, lead, bricks, 
spades, ploughs, large grindstones, baking-ovens, cook- 
ing-stoves without number, kegs, barrels, harness, cloth- 
ing, bacon and beans, we found along the road in pretty 
much the order in which they have been enumerated. 

80 



THROUGH THE LAND OF FOSSILS 

The carcasses of eight oxen, lying in one heap by the 
roadside, this morning, explained a part of the trouble. 
. . . At the noon halt an excellent rifle was found 
in the river, thrown there by some desperate emigrant 
who had been unable to carry it any further. In the 
course of this one day the relics of seventeen wagons and 
the carcasses of twenty-seven dead oxen have been seen. 

One of the difficult parts of the route for the emi- 
grants was the Eed Desert, first seen well near Bridger. 
This is a curious stretch of shifting sand dunes, that 
extends for a distance of one hundred miles. Many of 
these dunes are one hundred feet high or more. All of 
them are traveling with the wind in a northeasterly 
direction. "If a few camels and an Arab or two were 
added to the scene, a spectator could easily imagine 
himself in the Sahara Desert," writes the author of a 
government bulletin who evidently believes that there 
is no more reason for making such a document dull and 
colorless than Bill Nye, who made Laramie famous, felt 
there was for confining the reading matter of a railway 
guide to "a wild incontinence of facts, figures and refer- 
ences to meal stations," but desired instead to make a 
guide on a new plan that would not ''permit informa- 
tion to creep in and mar the reader's enjoyment of 
the scenery." 

There is no lack of scenery in the Red. Desert, with 
its mirages and the gorgeous colorings of many shades 
of red and gray and brown and green and purple and 
yellow. When one wearies of the high coloring about 
him, it is possible to look up to the mountains. For 
there are many snow-clad peaks in Southern Wyoming. 
One of the most notable granite summits south of the 
railroad. Elk Mountain, is seven miles in diameter at 

6 81 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

its base, and may be seen for nearly one hundred and 
fifty miles of the journey across the state. 

There are gorges and canyons, too, through this 
favored section — for instance, the gorge of Bitter Creek, 
near its entrance to Green Eiver, one of the streams 
that later become responsible for the Colorado, the 
grandfather of all the canyons. The geologists say 
that millions of years ago Bitter Creek did some re- 
markable erosion work, cutting a gorge for itself more 
than a thousand feet deep through formations that have 
since been leveled and carried away to form other 
lands. The government document already quoted again 
proves its ability to depart from prosaic figures and dry 
catalogues by saying : 

The volume of rock removed by this small stream 
alone would probably be reckoned in hundreds of cubic 
miles, and all of it found its way through the narrow 
gorge to Green Eiver. Hundreds of other streams deliv- 
ered similar amounts to the same river, and the question 
may well be asked, What became of it all I Those who 
have visited the Grand Canyon of the Colorado in Ari- 
zona have noted the muddy water of that river and won- 
dered where the mud came from. Some of it came from 
Wyoming. Those who have visited the built-up plains 
and filled barriers that mark the ancient course of Colo- 
rado Eiver in Western Arizona have wondered where 
the material came from to fill these enormous barriers. 
Some of it came from the valleys through which the 
Union Pacific Eailroad is built. Those who have trav- 
eled over the Southern Pacific line in Southern Cali- 
fornia where it crosses the broad delta which the 
Colorado built out across the Gulf of California so far 
that the north end of the Gulf — now the Salton Sink — 
was completely cut off from the main part of the gulf, 
have wondered where all the sand and silt of that great 




ON GREEN RIVER, WYOMING 




DEVIL S SLIDE, WEBER CANYON, UTAH 



THROUGH THE LAND OF FOSSILS 

delta came from. Some of it once rested on the arch 
of the Rock Springs dome, through which Bitter Creek 
cuts its way. 

The town of Green River looks back from the river 
on a series of picturesque shale and sandstone bluffs, 
brilliantly colored, pleasingly stratified and marvel- 
ously fashioned in forms that it would be impossible 
to counterfeit. A study of the bluffs along the river 
and of isolated natural monuments like the ''teapot and 
cup" will be a good preparation for the examination 
of Steamboat Rock, or Pulpit Rock, or Jack-in-the-Pul- 
pit, or the Sphinx in Echo Canyon, over the line in Utah, 
or The Witches, near by, a weird group of pinnacles, 
some of them as high as one hundred feet, the joint prod- 
uct of wind and rain; or The Devil's Slide, a few miles 
farther west, formed by the washing away of soft shale 
from about two parallel upright ledges of limestone, 
forty feet high, and twenty feet apart. 

Many years ago a writer in the Overlmid MontJily, 
speaking of such strange monuments as these in all 
parts of the world, that ''bear resemblance to the human 
form or face, or take the shape of some animal," said 
it would be fitting to apply to them Shakespeare's scene 
between Hamlet and Polonius, if for "cloud" should 
be read ' ' rock. ' ' Thus : 

Hamlet. Do you see yonder rock that's almost in 
shape of a camel? 

Polonius. By the Mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. 
Hamlet. Methinks it is like a weasel. 
Polonius. It is backed like a weasel. 
Hamlet. Or like a whale. 
Polonius. Very like a whale. 

83 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

All the traveler needs is imagination when looking 
at the startling formations of Wyoming and Utah. 
They represent just what he pleases to call them. 

A little while before crossing from Wyoming into 
Utah the railroad passes through the Aspen Eidge 
by means of the famous Aspen tunnel. It is possible 
to pile up a lot of statistics about this bore, more than 
a mile long, but it is so much more interesting to read 
the description of the work given by one who has told, 
as if he really enjoyed the telling, of some of the marvels 
of railway engineering in the United States : 

They struck a mountain that for startling develop- 
ments broke the records in the annals of American engi- 
neering. It was here that the underground stream was 
encountered, but this was a mere incident among the 
possibilities in the mountain. ... To bore a hole 
through the mountain at a depth of 450 feet from the 
highest point was not diflScult; but the curious thing 
was that, after being bored, the hole would not stay 
straight. The mountain, reversing every metaphor and 
rule of stability, refused to remain in the same position 
for two days together. It moved forcibly into the bore 
from the right side, and, w^hen remonstrated with, stole 
quietly in from the left ; it descended on the tunnel with 
crushing force from above and rose irresistibly up into 
it from below. The mountain moved from every quar- 
ter of the compass and from quarters hardly covered 
by the compass. Workmen grew superstitious, contrac- 
tors suffered chills, and engineers stood nonplussed. 
Starting in huge cleavage planes, the shale became at 
times absolutely uncontrollable. Wall plates well fash- 
ioned into regular alignments at night looked in the 
rnorning as if giants had twisted them ; 12 x 12 hard pine 
timbers, laid skin to skin in the tunnel, were snapped 
like matches by a mysterious pressure. Engineers are 
on record as stating that in the Aspen tunnel such con- 

84 



THROUGH THE LAND OF FOSSILS 

struction timbers were broken in different directions 
within a length of four feet. An engineer stood one day 
in the tunnel on a solid floor of these timbers, when 
under him, and for a distance of 200 feet ahead of him, 
the floor rose, straining and cracking, three feet up into 
the air. Before the tunnel could be finished it became 
necessary to line over seven hundred feet of it with a 
heavy steel and concrete construction. 

"When the Mormon vanguard crossed the mountain 
they used the route over Aspen Eidge. The one hundred 
and fifty men and three women in the party had crossed 
Wyoming by a trail marked out for them by Brigham 
Young, the leader, close to the Overland Trail, yet 
diverging from it except at some difficult river crossings 
and in mountain passes. After crossing the mountains 
into Utah they followed Emigration Canyon to Salt 
Lake City. 

The route of the railroad to Ogden follows Echo 
Canyon, whose twenty-five miles became famous in 
1857 because here the Mormons prepared to resist the 
2500 soldiers sent to Utah by President Buchanan to 
back his appointment of a successor to Brigham Young 
as governor, who did not propose to be superseded. 

The canyon, whose walls in some places are one 
thousand feet high, and approach wdthin a stone's throw 
of each other, afforded a wonderful opportunity for 
defence. Fortifications were built on the north wall. 
Breastworks and ditches in the canyon itself were a part 
of the scheme for holding back the United States troops, 
whose leader, after the capture of several supply trains 
by the Mormons, decided to withdraw for the winter to 
the region of Fort Bridger. Then, in June, 1858, they 
made their way without resistance toward Salt Lake 

85 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

City, and were met by messengers who told of sub- 
mission. One who was in the expedition wrote of 
the journey: 

For miles and miles in the gorges, at the season 
of the year when they were traversed by the army, the 
road winds through thickets of alder and willows and 
hawthorn, whose branches interlace and hang so low, 
under the load of leaves and blossoms, as to sweep the 
backs of horsemen. The ridges which the road sur- 
mounts between canyon and canyon are covered with 
fields of luxurious grass and flowers, in the midst of 
which patches of snow still linger. From these, in the 
clear noon sunshine, the broken line of the Wasatch 
and Uintah Eanges is visible along the horizon; but 
through the morning and evening haze, only the tracery 
of the white crests can be discerned. The valleys of the 
Bear and Weber Elvers are particularly beautiful. 

From Echo Canyon, where traces of the Mormon 
fortification of 1857 may still be seen high up on the 
cliffs, the railroad enters Weber Canyon and leads to 
Ogden, though the Lincoln Highway goes directly to 
Salt Lake City. Beyond the canyon lie smiling valleys 
whose green fields and burdened orchards tell eloquently 
that Brigham Young was justified when he laughed at 
James Bridger's skeptical offer of a thousand dollars 
for the first ear of com raised in the Zion to which the 
prophet was leading his people, a region that has been 
made so gloriously productive that it is one of the 
marvels of the West. 



CHAPTER VIII 
FROM THE YELLOWSTONE TO THE GRAND CANYON 

SOUTH of the Yellowstone National Park in Wy- 
oming is the rugged Wind Kiver Eange. There 
hardy hunters of the horned mountain sheep and 
the lordly elk have learned to turn their steps, and there 
those who would have the even more satisfying ex- 
perience of becoming familiar with the hidden recesses 
of the haunts of these animals turn from the beaten 
track and revel in the wild glories of lofty mountain 
and lovely valley. 

But it is not so long since these secluded regions 
proved all but unconquerable to the adventurous ex- 
plorer who ventured to solve their problems. In 1833 
Captain Bonneville came this way, but he soon learned 
the folly of trying to conquer the Wind River Range. 
Before long he was lost in the labyrinths of the moun- 
tains. After many attempts to escape he resolved 
to ascend the range with one of his men. Washington 
Irving says that ' ' after much toil he reached the summit 
of a lofty cliff, but to behold gigantic peaks rising all 
around, and towering far into the snowy regions of the 
atmosphere. He soon found that he had undertaken 
a tremendous task. . . . The ascent was so steep 
and iTigged that he and his companions were frequently 
obliged to clamber on hands and knees with their guns 
strung on their backs. Frequently exhausted with 
fatigue and dripping with perspiration, they threw 
themselves upon the snow, and took handfuls of it to 
allay their parching thirst. At one place they even 
stripped off their coats and hung them on the bushes, 

87 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

and tlius lightly clad proceeded to scramble over those 
eternal snows. As they ascended still higher, there 
were cool breezes that refreshed and braced them, and 
springing with new ardor to their task, they at length 
attained the summit." 

Fed by the melting snows of the mountains that 
caused Captain Bonneville and his companions so much 
tribulation, the Green Eiver begins, not far from the 
central point of the range, the marvelous course that 
leads almost directly south through Wyoming and Utah 
to its junction with the Grand. Before their union 
both rivers pass through a succession of awe-inspiring 
canyons. After they form the Colorado it looks as if the 
canyon-forming propensities of both streams increase 
in more than arithmetical progression. Canyons be- 
come chasms, and the grandeur of the river's setting 
becomes more stupendous as the course toward the 
southern boundary of Utah is approached. 

Because Green Eiver and its continuation, the Colo- 
rado Eiver, are far from being highways except for the 
most venturesome, it may seem useless to say much of 
their scenic wonders. Yet they are the most remarkable 
features of a state which, without them, would still have 
endless treasures to offer the indefatigable sightseer. 
There are those who have dreamed of a Denver, Colo- 
rado Canyon and Pacific Eailway that would open up 
the mysteries of the canyons. What a wonderful trip 
could be made on a route that, after following the Grand 
Eiver by the Denver and Eio Grande Eailroad, should 
cling to the bank of that stream to its union with the 
Green, and then along the Colorado into the region of 
Southern Utah which, even as late as 1868, was indicated 
on the map of the War Department as territory abso- 

88 



YELLOWSTONE TO GRAND CANYON 

lutely unknown, and which is yearly yielding fresh sur- 
prises to explorers who penetrate more carefully into 
side canyons, plateaus and mountain ridges ! 

Even now the wonder rivers may be approached, 
with greater or less ease, at various points. The Union 
Pacific Eailroad crosses the Green at Green River Sta- 
tion, the starting point of the very few expeditions of 
exploration of the river to its mouth, and an easy portal 
for the hunter, the sportsman or the tourist who is in 
search of the unusual. Then the Denver and Rio Grande 
Railroad crosses the stream some three hundred miles 
south by river, at Green River, Utah, a town in the midst 
of what was once a desert, though now it is a garden. 
Between the two Green Rivers are other points of ap- 
proach, notably the Dinosaur National Monument, not 
far from the point where the river reenters Utah after 
being forced into Colorado by the Uintah Mountains. 

There are several comparatively easy approaches to 
Dinosaur Monument. The Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean 
Highway passes through Vernal, Utah, and from Vernal 
there is a good auto road to the government reservation. 
Those w^ho travel by train can make stage connection 
for Vernal from Helper, Utah, or railroad and stage 
connection from Mack, Colorado, both stations on the 
Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. 

Eighty acres have been set apart at Dinosaur 
National Monument, including Dinosaur Peak. Em- 
bedded in the rocks of the mountain are countless bones 
of the gigantic dinosaur, of which many have been 
removed by scientists on the statf of the Carnegie 
Museum at Pittsburgh, As one result of their labors 
there is at the Museum a restored skeleton one hundred 
feet long and twenty feet high. It is worth the ride from 
the railroad to see the absorbingly interesting process 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

of blasting these priceless relics from the stone in which 
they have been embedded, since that age long gone when 
in the language of a government bulletin, "many dino- 
saurs and other prehistoric animals must have floated 
down some ancient river, from a source unknown, and 
become embedded in a sand bar; there they lay for 
countless years until they were covered to a great depth 
by the sand. Then came a seismic upheaval which forced 
the sand bed among the mountain tops. ' ' 

Those who push on a few difficult miles farther east 
will come to Lodore Canyon in Green River, so named 
by the first explorer, Major J. W. Powell, in 1869, be- 
cause its waters come 

"Turning and twisting. 
Around and around 
With endless rebound ! 
Smiting and fighting, 
A sight to delight in ; 
Confounding, astounding, 
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound." 

For twenty miles Lodore is a bewildering series of 
marvels : 

"It starts abruptly at what we have called the Gate 
of Lodore, with walls nearly 2000 feet high, and they 
are never lower than this until Ave reach the Alcove 
Brook, about three miles above the foot," was the de- 
scription Major Powell gave of the canyon. "They 
are very irregular, standing in vertical or overhanging 
cliffs in places, terraced in others, or receding in steep 
slopes, and are broken by many side gulches and can- 
yons. The highest point on the wall is at Dunn's Cliff, 
near Triplet Falls, where the rocks reach an altitude 
of 2700 feet, and the peaks a little way back rise nearly 
one thousand feet higher. Yellow pines, nut pines, firs, 
and cedars stand in extensive forests on the Uintah 

90 



YELLOWSTONE TO GRAND CANYON 

Mountains, and, clinging to the rocks and growing in the 
crevices, come down the walls to the water's edge from 
Flaming Gorge to Echo Park. The red sandstones are 
lichened over ; delicate mosses grow in the moist places 
and ferns festoon the walls." 

Echo Cliff marks the end of Lodore. Frederick S. 
Dellenbaugh, who went through Lodore in 1871, said 
that the name was given to the park-like opening ''be- 
cause from the smooth bare cliff directly opposite our 
landing a distinct echo of ten words was returned to 
the speaker." 

In the interval before the next canyon to the south 
are two towns, Jensen, surrounded by fruitful lands, 
and Ouray, where Indians flock for supplies. Not far 
from Jensen begins Desolation Canyon, ninety-seven 
miles long, where Major Powell had his hands full giv- 
ing names to formations, pinnacles, cliffs and other ob- 
jects of which he was the discoverer. The Land of the 
Standing Eocks and the Butte of the Cross were two of 
his christenings that persist to this day. 

Canyon follows canyon. The walls become more 
rugged, the country along the river more desolate. 
Tributaries enter through canyons of their own, among 
them being the White Canyon, where is located the 
Natural Bridge National Monument, on the San Juan 
River, to the north of the Eainbow Bridge National 
Monument. Both of these monuments may be ap- 
proached most easily from Mesa Verde National Park, 
Colorado, as already described. Between them is a 
trail that affords an opportunity one hundred and sixty 
miles long to wander among the mysteries of a land 
speaking eloquently of the past ; it becomes difficult to 
realize that one is only a little distance from all the 
refinements of civilization. 



CHAPTER IX 

FROM THE CITY OF THE SAINTS TO ZION CANYON 

"H: TOU won't like the trip from Salt Lake to 

\ Lund," a fellow-passenger said, as he noted 

-*- the destination marked on the author's ticket. 

''It is hot and dusty and monotonous. You'll be glad 

when you get there ; and you '11 never want to go again. ' ' 

He was mistaken. Most of the way there was little 
or no dust. In spite of the fact that another passenger 
gave kindly warning that the umbrella which had been 
a part of the author's equipment thus far would not 
be needed in the south countrj^ the rain soon began to 
fall and for three days he successfully dodged copious 
showers that fell all about him. Sometimes there were 
patches where no rain had fallen for some time, but 
such minor matters as heat and dust are forgotten by 
those who rejoice in the comradeship of mountains, the 
friendship of meadows, and the warm chumminess 
of the desert. liow could such a combination be 
called monotonous? 

Down through the valley of the Jordan leads the 
inviting Arrowhead Trail, as well as the Los Angeles 
and Salt Lake Eailroad, the favorite system of the Los 
Angeles photoplay companies because it points the way 
so quickly to scenes of marvel and surprise, and because 
its officials are singularly accommodating in providing 
facilities for photographing runaway cars, fleeing 
train robbers and agile telegraph operators with 
coquettish curls. 

There are no valleys like the Jordan Valley and its 

92 



CITY OF THE SAINTS TO ZION CANYON 

successors to the south. On either side are peaks snow- 
capped until far into the summer. From these sweep 
down refreshing breezes to temper the heat, and life- 
giving waters to fill the canals that make the region a 
bower of beauty and a garden of surpassing fertility. 

These lofty mountains, whose rugged, serrated sum- 
mits are so clearly outlined against the deep blue of the 
Utah sky, look down benignantly on inviting orchards, 
on prosperous looking farms, and on clustering villages 
where Mormon temple and modem school divide archi- 
tectural honors. 

At intervals that become more frequent as the train 
moves southward appears land that needs only water 
to make it a part of the surrounding garden. Here 
and there the lower summits crowd close and the eye 
turns across the valley to the mountains on the west, 
resting with delight on the marvelous rows of Lombardy 
poplars that make the plain seem like the plaything 
of some giant who has placed his arbors as a child builds 
with his blocks. 

But the closing in of the mountains is only a threat. 
Once again the valley spreads out on either hand, and 
the precious waters flow through the ditches to the wait- 
ing fields, some of these the property of hardy men 
who live in log cabins of the pioneers ; others yielding 
their fruits to those whose prosperity is marked by 
cosier farmhouses, or, it may be, by homes in centers 
like Lehi, American Fork, or Provo. These towns in 
Utah Valley have the double advantage of mountains 
on one side and Utah Lake on the other — a lake whose 
size and beauty would command more attention but for 
the larger and more spectacular Great Salt Lake to 
the north. 

93 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Even after the first fertile valleys end and the desert 
begins there is more of life to follow. For, as the rail- 
road and the highway cross a barren stretch where the 
soil is red and the slopes are forbidding, Sevier River 
meanders near by and prepares the traveler for the 
sight of the new beet-sugar country around Delta and 
Oasis and Black Rock. Here artesian wells go into 
partnership with the river, fitting the ground for the 
production of sugar beets ' ' that weigh as much as nine 
pounds each," according to the boast of one hopeful 
homesteader whose lands just now are without the 
watered area, though he is looking forward eagerly to 
the time ''when the government will help us out as it 
has helped others." Then he added, ''The day will 
come when the country beyond the Beaver Mountains, 
with Sevier Lake in its midst, will be as rich as the 
Utah Valley." 

Below the new beet-sugar country, in the Escalante 
Desert, is Lund, the railroad gateway to Zion Canyon, 
one of the youngest — and destined to be one of the most 
popular — of all the National Parks. One hundred 
and five miles of stage road is the connecting link. A 
single automobile is usually able to carry all applicants 
for transportation to this hidden marvel in the moun- 
tains of Washington County, east of the Dixie National 
Forest, and perhaps one hundred delightful miles above 
the northern border of the Grand Canyon, of which it 
is really the first cousin. And there are not lacking 
those who say they get more real joy from the little 
cousin than from its majestic relative. 

Some day there will be a railroad to Cedar City, 
or even to Zion itself. But those who wait until then 
to visit the canyon will lose a rare treat ; it is difficult 

94 



CITY OF THE SAINTS TO ZION CANYON 

to imagine a more varied and pleasing ride of like 
distance. For the author this pleasure was intensified. 
Dependable arrangements have been made for the 
through transportation of passengers, but in conse- 
quence of an error of his own he was dependent on a 
succession of stages, the driver of a load of alfalfa, and 
the car of a genial driller who is helping to put to the 
test the insistent belief that this favored district is as 
rich in oil as it is in mountains of the finest iron ore 
and in other varied minerals. "Watch us when the 
railroad comes,'* the residents say. 

The iron deposits are within Iron Springs Gap, 
where is a famous spring that has meant life to many a 
desert traveler. ' ' There are fifteen miles of iron from 
north to south, and the field is eight miles wide, the 
largest known undeveloped deposit in the world," the 
claim is made locally. 

To-day sheep graze by tens of thousands near these 
iron mountains. In fact, the entire country is a favorite 
with the sheep raisers, and, in the season, huge trucks, 
wool-laden, cross the mountains and the desert to Lund. 
The large ranch near the Gap contains ten thousand 
acres ; for this, including water rights, the proprietor 
paid thirty thousand dollars. 

In rapid succession the road leads among mountains 
and past ravines that might almost be called canyons, 
through Mormon villages, among the famous vineyards 
of Toquerville, along and across the great Hurricane 
Fault stretching away some two hundred miles, which 
has long been to the geologist a favorite subject for 
speculation. A two-hour wait at La Verkin Forks for 
a promised automobile that never came gave opportu- 
nity for a long study of a landscape of infinite variety. 

95 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Bare desert, where jack rabbits leaped and quail darted 
across the road, and where were the ravishing cactus 
blooms, some white, some yellow, but most of them of 
a strangely beautiful red; the two clustering villages 
on the Virgin Eiver, La Verkin and Hurricane, with 
watered fields and orchards of vivid green ; above Hur- 
ricane the black rocks that mark the location of Hot 
Sulphur Springs, the favored resort of the young people 
of the district; far to the south the uplands whose dark 
colors are emphasized by the strange Fort Pierce Sands, 
square miles of these, blood-red, as distinctly set off 
from the surroundings as is a field of wheat from 
the roadside. 

Then came the six-mile ride on the load of alfalfa, 
much of it up, up, still up the slope above the valley on 
whose edge is La Verkin by the Virgin. It was not 
easy to accept the cordial invitation of the homesteader 
who sat atop the hay — it seemed too bad to add to his 
load; but it was not possible to decline. And what a 
view was spread out as the slow-moving wagon grad- 
ually climbed toward Virgin! No automobile could 
move slowly enough to give to its passengers the joy 
of that half hour of hill climbing. 

Hospitality is a characteristic of the homesteaders 
and the dwellers in the villages of Utah. "I may not 
have much, but what I have is yours, ' ' one of them said. 
' ' May I use your telephone ? ' ' the query was put at one 
door. ''You bet!'' was the quick reply. ''May I ask 
for a drink of water ? ' ' brought the same smiling answer, 
and "You bet!" was the response to the plea of a 
belated traveler to be kept for the night in a vil- 
lage home. 




ZION CANYON, UTAH. FROM HICKs' POINT 



CITY OF THE SAINTS TO ZION CANYON 

A most painstaking honesty is another characteristic 
of the people. When he was bnilding the camp in the 
Canyon, Mr. W. "W. Wylie — whose name is well known 
to tourists by reason of his long connection with the 
Wylie-Way Camp of Yellowstone Park — had a most 
refreshing experience of this. A carpenter who had 
been working for him presented a bill that was less than 
had been expected. Mr. AVylie asked for an explanation. 
"Well, there were two days when I did not work full 
time, ' ' was the reply. ' ' One day I got to talking with 
you, and before I knew it two hours were gone. Then 
another day a man came up to see me, and I had to take 
out an hour for the visit. ' ' 

The last stage of the ride to Zion, from Virgin vil- 
lage, rapidly imf olds a panorama for which descriptions 
that in advance seemed fulsome and extravagant are 
seen to be inadequate. There is the stream, wandering 
here and there in the broad valley ; the strangely-shaped, 
brightly-colored mountains on the right which change 
like living creatures at every turn ; the towering peaks 
and ridges on the left, and above them all the inacces- 
sible sunnnit of Steamboat Mountain with a long, mesa- 
like hood rising above the precipice. A visitor to Zion 
in the summer of 1918, learning that this mountain had 
never been conquered, declared that no mountain could 
vanquish him. He was a former mountain climber ; but 
he was at length compelled to own his defeat. 

Near Springdale, the last of the old Mormon villages 
passed through on the way to the Canyon, is the real 
beginning of Zion National Park. The valley narrows, 
and the formations become more startling in contour, 
more marvelous in coloring. To the left leads the 
tributary Parunoweap Canyon, where cliff dwellings 
7 97 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

are accessible. But the chief lure is onward to the main 
valley which the Indians called Mukuntuweap, though 
when Brigham Young opened the way for the early 
Mormons to go to this secure hiding-place in the moun- 
tains he called it Little Zion — ^its majestic rocks, its 
massive walls, its sublime summits made it seem like 
a little heaven. The pioneers made their homes in the 
canyon, and they tilled fields along the borders of the 
Eio Virgin. They constructed their canals for irrigat- 
ing the land, and they lived happily there until the 
decreasing vegetation at the headwaters of the stream 
caused floods that washed away much of the fertile 
ground. Then they began to move down to the broader 
valley. The fame of this canyon as a pleasure resort 
spread, and in 1917 it was made a National Monument. 
In 1919 it became a National Park. 

Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Wylie are the pioneers who are 
doing for this crowning gloiy of Utah what they did for 
the Yellowstone Park. In 1917 they opened their com- 
fortable camp and began to welcome the fortunate 
people who were able to come to this out-of-the-way 
spot. An examination of the camp register for 1917 
shows that about three hundred visitors stopped here ; 
most of these were from Utah and California, though 
some came from the East. In 1918, when war condi- 
tions called for a curtailment of vacation travel, per- 
haps one hundred, in all, registered, and most of these 
lived near by. In 1919, with the lifting of travel restric- 
tions and with ample provision for the comfort of the 
visitors both on the way to the canyon and within its 
borders, the tide of tourist travel increased. The day 
must come soon when thousands instead of scores will 
respond to the lure of Zion and will return home with 



CITY OF THE SAINTS TO ZION CANYON 

tales that will lead other thousands to seek this valley 
of marvels. For, while these marvels cannot well be 
compared with those of the Grand Canyon, the Yosem- 
ite, or the Yellowstone, they are finding enthusiastic 
friends who say that if they were given a choice of 
a second visit to any of these other resorts, or a return 
to Zion, they would hasten Zion-ward. 

In Utah itself the Canyon was all but unknown for 
many years. Even many of those who lived near by did 
not think that it am-ounted to anything. Mr. Wylie tells 
of a man who has spent his fifty years within a few miles 
of its borders. * ' Somehow I didn't look at these things 
you talk so much about," he said, "but now that you 
have called my attention to them I think they are kind 
of worth while after all." So a Mormon bishop at 
Springdale recently said that he had always thought 
of the mountains and rocks as barriers, nuisances and 
hindrances. ' ' Now I see that there is something more 
to them," he owns. 

It is fortunate that visitors are brought to Zion 
in the evening, when they are too weary to wander 
about. The vision afforded by the ride of a few miles 
from the gateway is enough for the first evening. Then 
comes the night in a comfortable bed, the lullaby being 
the sound of the flowing waters of the Virgin and the 
dropping of the blossoms from the clustering trees 
about the camp. In the morning early the pleasure 
ground in which one walks with reverent heart is ready 
to give its first and most lasting impression. If the 
day is bright — and it usually is — the sunlight is playing 
on the face of the western wall ; the sun itself does not 
appear until from ten to eleven. All day, however, the 
canyon is light, for in the late afternoon the eastern 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

wall reflects the sun's rays, and in June and July a 
newspaper can be read near the Virgin's brink, even 
as late as nine o'clock. If, however, the rain is falling, 
water will be pouring over the face of the precipices, 
making cascades that surprise at every turn. 

The camp is placed in one of the broadest parts of 
the valley, where it is possibly a little more than a 
quarter of a mile from wall to wall. These walls are 
one at the base, but are cleft higher up. The sky line 
is broken in a pleasing manner. The form of the cliffs 
is varied, and the glowing coloring changes from dawn 
to dusk. 

From the camp meadow the road is practicable for 
automobiles for a short distance only, but some day 
soon the way will be open for them five miles farther, 
to the point where the walls come so close together that 
there is no passage except for those who take to the 
water. In the meantime visitors have the choice of 
relying on their feet or of taking the saddle horses pro- 
vided. The more primitive method of transportation 
is much more satisfactory than any automobile can be, 
for the pace of the animal is just slow enough to afford 
the necessary leisure to look and look and look again. 
On the open road five miles may be made on horseback 
well within an hour; but in the canyon who wants to 
travel at such a rapid rate? The wise visitor is content 
with a mile or two an hour as he wanders along the trail, 
fords the Virgin at perhaps a score of easy crossings, 
with the water seldom above the horse's knees, or 
alights to spend an hour in one of the amphitheatres 
where the canyon twists and the mighty walls look down 
everywhere — except at one point, hidden so well that the 
visitor feels at first there can be no outlet. 

100 



CITY OF THE SAINTS TO ZION CANYON 

In one of these amphitheatres is Weeping Rock, an 
overhanging precipice from which are always dripping 
waters that force their way through from the bottom of 
a lake in the summit of the precipice, two thousand feet 
above. In time of flood the lake seeks an outlet over a 
natural dam, near the verge of the cliff, and pours over 
the rock to the valley below in a cascade of stupen- 
dous proportions. 

A little farther on is another amphitheatre, called 
the Temple of Sinawawa. Here, so tradition runs, the 
Indians used to gather — in the daytime, that is ; they 
were afraid to be found by night in this temple of the 
god whose stone image stands out close to one of 
the walls. 

It is to be hoped that the parsimony which so far 
has characterized the handing out of names to the more 
prominent formations in the canyon will continue. 
A few names in such a place are pleasing ; but let Zion 
Canyon be spared the fantastic nomenclature that 
gives to insignificant features high-sounding titles and 
to some of the most glorious marks of God's majestic 
handiwork imaginary descriptions that would make the 
sublime ridiculous. 

Among the few names that have been given is The 
Great White Throne. Possibly the reader may object 
to that name, but when he views this outstanding for- 
mation, which rises nearly three thousand feet above the 
valley — itself some forty-five hundred feet high — he 
will be apt to feel that no other name would fit this stu- 
pendous white monolith which commands the canyon for 
miles. The twists and turns of the water-shaped, wind- 
worn walls afford many points of vantage from which 
this inspiring precipice can be seen, and it is difficult 

101 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

to choose which is best; they are all so different, and 
they are all so tremendously effective. 

When one hears the name ''Angels' Landing," he 
is apt to think the reference is to a landing place on 
the river's brink. But no! the brink referred to is the 
summit of a lofty, many-colored formation "where no 
one could make a landing unless he had angels ' wings. " 

The walls are inaccessible at most points, but a 
daring frontiersman has found his way to the sunmait 
of one of the most inspiring rocks, twenty-seven hun- 
dred feet high, and is marketing for the valley and the 
villages below the rich timbers of the heights. It would 
be a long and almost impossible haul from the top 
around to the valley, so wire cables with a frail looking 
car have been stretched from the summit to the floor 
of the canyon. By means of the car timber is lowered, 
a few planks at a time, and supplies are raised to the 
workmen. Until several years ago venturesome visitors 
made the ascent by wire, but the trip is so dangerous 
that it has been forbidden. 

Beyond Cable Mountain the winding pathway leads 
between the precipices until the walls are only about 
a hundred feet apart. Half a mile farther on it is pos- 
sible to touch both walls with the outstretched hands. 
And two thousand feet above is the narrow strip of 
blue sky! 

The difficulty of approaching this awful chasm did 
not deter one company of young men who, in the summer 
of 1917, made their way out from Cedar City over the 
rugged mountains, on foot, to a spot where they could 
enter the Virgin, about seventeen miles above Wylie 
Camp. From there they waded or swam to the present 
limit of horseback exploration. '* We were in the water 




THE C;RKAT white throne, ZION canyon, UTAH 




THE BREAKS OF CEUAK CAN VON, UTAH 




IN ZION CANYON, UTAH 



CITY OF THE SAINTS TO ZION CANYON 

nine hours," one of the men said to the author. ''But 
it was worth it. I want to make that trip again. ' ' 

Even if a visitor has been privileged to spend a 
week in exploring the fastnesses of Zion Canyon and 
sitting under the spell of its mysteries, he is reluctant 
to leave. Yet when he is compelled to put the canyon 
behind him there are more joys before him. There 
is the ride back to Lund, and it is startling what a 
wonderfully different aspect a mountainous country 
presents when it is viewed from a new angle ! Hurri- 
cane Fault it there, but it seems like a stranger; 
canyons and villages, gardens and orchards, moun- 
tains and deserts, have all been seen before. But who 
would believe it ! 

And Zion Canyon is but one of the superb offerings 
of this mysterious' region of Southwestern Utah, where 
every year fresh discoveries are made by men who can- 
not resist the lure of the open. E. D. Adams, a Cedar 
City photographer, recently penetrated to the recesses 
of Cedar Canyon where not even a pack-horse can 
secure a footing, and found a great natural bridge that 
has since been seen by a number of others. With a 
companion he explored the Breaks of the Cedar Canyon, 
visiting two of the score or more side canyons which 
extend in a jagged semicircle for a distance of twelve 
miles. The editor of the Iron County Record declares 
that a view of the Breaks from the rim of the basin 
is one of the most fascinating sights to be found any- 
where. *' Because of the gorgeous and varied coloring, 
the fantastic, fairy-like pinnacles, the spires, and other 
f oiTnations, it has the appearance of an enchanted coun- 
try that has been made to slumber through the centu- 

103 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

lies, and, like the ashes on the mantle of a gas lamp, 
needs only a breath of wind to make it vanish 
into space." 

Soon there will probably be a well-built highway up 
Cedar Canyon to the country of the Breaks. For Cedar 
City is on the route from Northern Utah to Los Angeles, 
which will connect with a practicable road to the Grand 
Canyon and on to the Monumental Valley of San Juan 
County, with its great natural bridges, and even to the 
Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. 



CHAPTER X 

GOD'S AUTOGRAPH IN STONE 

THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 

WHEN one speaks of a task that is all but im- 
possible, he is apt to say something about 
making bricks without straAv, or the Labors of 
Hercules, or the Stone of Sisyphus, or reading the rid- 
dle of the Sphinx. But one who has seen the Grand 
Canyon of the Colorado has no more use for such fig- 
ures. Should it be desired to set a task that cannot be 
performed, it would be sufficient to say, ''Write a de- 
scription of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado." 

Many times the writer has thought he would try 
to tell what he saw when first he stood on the brinlc 
of the great chasm cut in the Arizona Plateau by the 
waters of the Colorado, but at each attempt his hand has 
been stayed. In memory he looks once more on the 
awe-inspiring vision that was spread before him one 
never-to-be-forgotten day in May, and again, as then, 
the tears are not far away, the voice will not do his 
bidding. He can only think, ' ' God ! ' ' When speech is 
possible, all he can say is ' ' God ! ' ' 

Some one has called the Grand Canyon "God's 
autograph in stone." The visitor cannot appreciate 
the words until he gazes in amazement and awe at the 
unmatched spectacle that silently waits for the millions 
who have never dreamed that their own land contains 
the greatest natural wonder of the world. 

Would you understand why the only normal person 
who can write about the Grand Canyon without a quick- 
ies 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

eiiing of the pulse and a despairing feeling that he had 
better turn to some other subject is the person who has 
never stood on its rim or followed the tortuous trail 
down the precipice to the river's brink? Go to the 
Grand Canyon! Would you draw nearer to God than 
ocean or lake or mountain has drawn you? Go to the 
Grand Canyon ! Would you know more of the almighty 
power of Him who holds you in the hollow of his hand? 
Go to the Grand Canyon ! Would you have made more 
real to you the stupendous sentence, ' ' In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth"? Go to the 
Grand Canyon ! The visit will strengthen faith, inspire 
with new zeal, and bring fresh meaning to life. 

Think of passing in a moment from a level plateau 
where there is nothing especially striking in the land- 
scape to a chasm more than a mile deep and thirteen 
miles to the opposite rim ; the distance does not seem so 
great, but the air is rare and clear, and what seems near 
is often far away. 

Think of this chasm filled with mountain peaks, not 
one of which reaches above the level of the feet. Think 
of these mountains carved in shapes fantastic, weird, 
grotesque, magnificent. 

Think not of somber-hued, rocky slopes and preci- 
pices, but of color schemes that are the delight and the 
despair of the artist — every shade of red and violet 
combined and contrasted until the canyon looks like a 
vast palette. Think of gazing on rocks and pinnacles 
and turrets that seem, to use the expression of one 
traveler, as if a million sunsets had been shattered 
there. Think of gazing on a thousand square miles 
of such wonders without moving to a fresh point 
of vantage. 

106 



GOD'S AUTOGRAPH IN STONE 

And when at length the awed observer stands and 
looks into the depths, and across to the farther wall, 
and picks out one by one the ten thousand castles and 
palaces and cathedrals between, he will be apt to think : 
' ' I did not expect anything like this. How could anyone 
ever think of describing it ?' ' He may feel like echoing 
the words of a visitor who came carelessly, but stood 
spellbound at the edge of the abyss, and cried, '^My 
God, there it is!'^ or he may look on in silence while 
the tears come unbidden, tears of which he will not be 
ashamed ; he may feel with John Muir that ' ' the prudent 
keep silence at this spectacle;" but whatever he says 
or does not say, he will know that God has given him a 
glimpse of His glory, and he will feel that he has just 
begun to live. 

It matters little where one takes his stand. He may 
pause in front of the palatial hotel which the railroad 
has pitched on the brink, at the entrance of the branch 
line from Williams, Arizona, or he may go along the 
rim to the right or to the left ; everywhere will be the 
vision glorious. 

It matters not what the time of day or night, or what 
the state of the weather ; the scene spread will be differ- 
ent, but it will always be so abundantly worth while that 
the beholder will thenceforth have new standards of 
beauty and color and glory. 

When the sun shines in a cloudless sky, the monu- 
mental structures in the canyon dazzle and bewilder, and 
one is glad to look at a point where the shadow of some 
majestic mountain rests the eye. When clouds float in 
the sky, the rapid play of light and shade on peaks and 
walls and bowlder-strewn slopes fills one with delight. 

In time of storm, when the rain falls in torrents, the 

107 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

canyon seems like a new world. In the early morning, 
before the mists have risen from the river and the 
heights above, it is even more like a fairyland than in 
the daytime. 

Many prefer to gaze when the moon only half defines 
the depths, and it seems that it is but a short distance 
to the river below, or the farther wall of the chasm. 

But, whenever the look is taken, the heart seems full 
to bursting. It is not easy to realize that the river, 
whose waters have cut their way from the surface of the 
plateau, is fully five miles from the brink in a straight 
line. It is still more diflScult to believe that what seems 
like a mere thread of silver is really a turbid, angry 
torrent feared by the Indians, and conquered by only 
a few daring explorers. 

One of these, who conducted an expedition in 1889, 
has told of his wildest ride on the river. ' ' The canyon 
was so narrow, the turns were so quick and sharp ; the 
current was rushing first on one side and then on the 
other, forming whirlpools, eddies, and chutes (for the 
river by a sudden flood had risen some twelve feet). 
Our boats, caught first in one and then in the other, now 
spun round like leaves in the wind, then shot far to the 
right or left almost against the wall ; now caught in a 
mighty roll, and first carried to the top of the great 
wave, and then dropped into the trough of the rear with 
a force almost sufficient to take one 's breath. ' ' 

It was more than three hundred years after the 
discovery of the canyon by the Spaniards in 1540 before 
an expedition braved the unknown perils of the stream, 
a mighty river two thousand miles long, draining three 
hundred thousand square miles, and passing for two 

108 



li 




GOD'S AUTOGRAPH IN STONE 

hundred and seventeen miles in the depths of the canyon 
of its own making. 

The most complete exploration made up to that time 
was that of Major Powell and his party in 1869. Three 
months were spent in traversing one thousand miles of 
water. Three of his nine men lost their lives, but it 
was not the river that destroyed them. The terrors of 
the passage through the canyon became too great for 
them, and they left the party and climbed to the plateau. 
There they were discovered by Indians, who would not 
credit the tale that they had come down the river in 
boats. Thinking that they were being deceived, they 
put the intruders to death. 

While tourists cannot yet undertake the passage of 
the treacherous river, they can find their way down the 
side of the canyon to the edge of the stream. There 
are a number of more or less difficult trails. Perhaps 
the most famous of these is Bright Angel Trail, down 
which guides conduct tourists on donkey-back. Eight 
hours are required for the round trip. 

Those who do not feel equal to this somewhat fatig- 
uing trail trip can walk or drive along the river, seeking 
points where the canyon can be seen to advantage. One 
of the best of these is fortunately readily accessible by 
automobile road through the Coconino Forest. This is 
Grand View Point, from which one can see the elbow 
formed by the turn of the river from the north to the 
southwest. Here the distance is more than twenty miles 
to the opposite rim of the canyon, and spread before 
the eye is a vision beside which the glories already seen 
seem small. Yet it is not right to use that word. As 
if anything in the Grand Canyon could be called small ! 
The view upstream and downstream gives a better 

109 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

realization than would otherwise be possible of the fact 
that the chasm is not a single canyon ; it is made up of* 
many canyons which intersect one another until the 
result is like a labyrinth. In this labyrinth hundreds 
of the natural wonders at which travelers marvel might 
be deposited, and they would be lost unless one should 
search for them diligently. Even when found they 
would be so dwarfed by the majesty around them that 
they would excite no comment. 

This is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado which 
"flashes instant communication of all that architecture 
and painting and music for a thousand years have 
gropingly striven to express." This is the crowning 
glory of American scenery, *'a paradox of chaos and 
repose, of gloom and radiance, of immeasurable desola- 
tion and enthralling beauty. It is a despair and a joy, 
a woe and an ecstasy, a requiem and a hallelujah, a 
world ruin and a world joy." 

The author asked his guide whether he ever longed 
to get away from the chasm. Pointing to a distant spot 
on the river, he said: "I was bom there. I have lived 
here all my life. I have gone down into the depths, and 
have crossed the stream that looks so little from here ; 
I have stood with hundreds of parties on this point, and 
have talked with them of what they could see. But I 
never weary of it. ' ' 

A second query was put to him, ''What does the 
canyon say to you ? ' ' 

He hesitated. Then, in a subdued tone he replied, 
''It tells me of God." 



CHAPTER XI 
ALONG THE WESTERN BORDER OF ARIZONA 

FROM Grreen River, Wyoming, to the western limit 
of the Grand Canyon, the Green and Colorado 
Rivers descend more than five thousand feet. The 
further descent of the Colorado from the mouth of the 
Virgin River to the Gulf of California is more than 
eight hundred feet. This section of the stream is usu- 
ally looked on as comparatively quiet by tourists who 
cross it on the Southern Pacific at Yuma, or even on the 
Santa Fe at Needles. Indeed, if the entire stream were 
like the sections seen at these points the suggestion 
made in 1806 by Colonel Zebulon Pike would not seem 
so far wrong; after his visit to the vicinity of Pike's 
Peak he suggested what he thought was a solution for 
the problem of easy communication between the plains 
and the Pacific Ocean. The route he suggested was by 
water, except for about two hundred miles; pioneers 
were to be asked to ascend the Arkansas River, then 
cross over to the Colorado River and descend its waters 
to the Gulf of California. Evidently he thought that 
the course of the Colorado was much like that of the 
Arkansas. It did not enter his mind that between its 
source in Colorado and its exit to the sea the Colorado 
presented more majestic difficulties than any other 
river in America. 

It was not long, however, until other explorers began 
to tell stories of a river lost in a great chasm, of a 
tremendous fissure in the earth's surface of which the 
Indians spoke with awe, of mysteries that baffled de- 
scription, yet lured the investigator. 

Ill 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Finally the United States authorities determined to 
make the river give up its secrets. Expeditions were 
organized to explore the stream. The easiest way 
seemed to be to attack it from the mouth, for there, and 
for more than a hundred miles, it seemed to be as well 
conducted and self-respecting a river as others on 
the continent. 

In 1857 a party under Lieutenant Ives was commis- 
sioned to ascend the Colorado and map its wanderings. 
It was known that he would have difficulties of shallow 
water, rocks and cataracts to contend with, and a curious 
steamer was constructed for him which, it was thought, 
would enable him to go far toward the source. This ves- 
sel, called the Explorer, was fifty-four feet long, and 
had a stern wheel. The hull was open amidships. The 
boiler occupied one-third of the vacant space. There 
was a little deck at the bow; on this was a four- 
pound howitzer. 

The strange vessel attracted the attention of the 
Mohave Indians, who lived along the river. Once the 
historian of the party wrote : ''All day the Indians have 
followed us, examining the boat and its occupants with 
huge curiosity." The children were a fascinated feat- 
ure of the observing parties. ' ' Their delight to-day has 
been to mimic the man at the bow who takes the sound- 
ings ; every call being echoed from the bank with amaz- 
ing fidelity of tone and accent. ' ' 

The government document in which Lieutenant Ives 
described his expedition is anything but dry and prosaic. 
His way led through natural features whose strange 
sublimity is perhaps unparalleled in any part of the 
world. '*At every instant the scenery became wilder 
and more romantic, ' ' he said. The rocky banks became 

112 



THE WESTERN BORDER OF ARIZONA 

higher ; finally they became cliffs, then precipices. The 
water swirled and rushed in eddies and cataracts that 
threatened the boat at every instant. The canyon be- 
came so deep that it was like dusk at midday. The 
wondrous colorings of the rocks caused amazement. 

The Needles were so named by Lieutenant Whipple. 
Beyond he saw the Mohave Canyon, where "a low pur- 
ple gateway and a splendid corridor, with massive red 
walls, formed the entrance to the canyon. At the head 
of the avenue frowning mountains, piled one above the 
other, seemed to block the way. An abrupt turn at 
the base of the apparent barrier revealed a cavern-like 
approach to the profound chasm beyond. A scene of 
such inspiring grandeur as that which now presented 
itself I have never before witnessed. On either side 
majestic cliffs, hundreds of feet in height, rose precipi- 
tously from the water. As the river went through the 
narrow entrance every turn developed some sublime 
effect or startling novelty in the view. Brilliant tints of 
purple, green, brown, red, and white illuminated the 
stupendous surfaces and relieved the sombre monotony. 
Far above, clear and distinct upon the narrow strip of 
sky, turrets, spires, jagged statue-like peaks and gro- 
tesque pinnacles overlooked the deep abyss. ' ' 

Some distance farther on the river leads through the 
Black Mountain, by a canyon the deepest and most 
mysterious yet seen. Just before entering this, in the 
rapids, the explorers struck a sunken rock. ''For a 
second the impression was that the canyon had fallen 
in," Lieutenant Ives said. "The concussion was so 
violent that the men in the bow were thrown overboard. 
The person who was pitching a log into the fire, went 

8 113 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

half-way in with it ; the boiler was thrown out of place, 
the steam pipe doubled up, the wheel-house torn away." 

Slowly and painfully the voyage' was continued 
along the entire western border of Arizona, to within a 
short distance of the place where the Virgin Eiver meets 
the Colorado, the place where tourists from the north 
who do not mind a bit of hardship come down from Salt 
Lake City, through the Little Zion section, for a view of 
the canyon that many think exceeds in grandeur any- 
thing offered from the more easily accessible southern 
rim of the Grand Canyon. 

The route taken by the visitor from the North is 
much the same as that outlined by Lieutenant Ives as a 
part of the route for the transportation of supplies to 
the military forts in Utah. To discover this he had been 
sent up the river. By the adoption of this route up the 
river and then by land to Great Salt Lake seven hun- 
dred miles would be saved over the all-land route. 

When he had made his observations. Lieutenant 
Ives reluctantly turned from the river 'Svhose strange 
sublimity is perhaps unparalleled in any part of the 
world," a region, in the words of another pioneer ex- 
plorer, ''more difficult to traverse than the Alps or the 
Himalayas." Then he added that by a study of this 
region ''a concept of sublimity can be obtained never 
again to be equaled on the hither side of Paradise." 



CHAPTER XII 
THE ROMANCE OF THE SALTON SINK 

THE students of geology, fascinated by the rec- 
ords that may be learned by those skilled in the 
science as they interview mountains and rocks 
and plains and canyons, have been known to wish that 
they could have lived in an age when some of the things 
were going on. But the geologist replies that to-day 
many similar changes are in progress, yet it is impos- 
sible to measure them because one year or even one 
hundred years sees little advance in a movement that, 
measured in some future age, may seem immense. 

Yet it is possible to refer the curious to a region 
where some of the processes of geology, usually age- 
long, have been compressed into a few years. This 
region is from Yuma westward across the great depres- 
sion in Southern California, known as the Salton Sink. 
Here, since 1904, have taken place earth-building and 
earth-destroying events that are a picture in miniature 
of other gigantic processes of geologic time. And who 
dares prophesy that, even within a few years, similar 
occurrences will not destroy the fertile lands of the 
valley to the west of the Colorado, whose waters, now 
forced to do the will of man, ever threaten to have their 
own way again? Those who travel from Yuma west- 
ward by the Southern Pacific will cross this region of 
romantic history. 

For ages the great river has been busily building 
and destroying all along the lower section of its erratic 
course. Time was when the Gulf of California reached 

115 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

to the north about to the point where Yuma is now 
located. As the Colorado brought down billions of 
cubic feet of soil, this was deposited at the mouth, and 
the gulf was gradually pushed much farther south. 
West of the river an arm of the gulf extended to the 
north, but this, too, fell a prey to Colorado silt ; a natural 
dam was thrown across this arm of the gulf. Of course 
the result was a salt water lake. Silt deposited in the 
channel of the river made it higher than the surround- 
ing country. Naturally, then, when the periodical floods 
came, the water overflowed the banks and sought the 
land-locked salt-water sea by channels cut for the pur- 
pose which are now known as the Alamo Eiver and 
the New River. Then came other floods — and it is never 
possible to tell what a flood will do. The floods dammed 
the two channels that renewed the supplies of what, 
by this time, had become a fresh-water lake. Of course, 
under the circumstances, the lake had no choice as to its 
conduct, but had to dry up and disappear. There was 
left a great depression, at its lowest point nearly three 
hundred feet below the level of the sea, and some two 
thousand square miles in extent. 

For a long time settlers looked with suspicion on the 
lands of the Salton Sink, as it was called. Then came 
the discovery that all those lands needed to produce 
crops of fabulous riches was water. About 1900 the 
California Development Company sought to supply the 
need by cutting an opening in the Colorado, and divert- 
ing a sufficient quantity of water from the streams 
through more than three hundred miles of canals, lead- 
ing to all parts of the valley. The effort was success- 
ful. The water had sufficient fall, as the river at the 
point where the opening was made is one hundred and 

116 




A.\ llUUCATlMi CAXAL 




■««==aw 



ARIZONA DESERT NEAR I'HCENIX 



THE ROMANCE OF THE SALTON SINK 

ten feet above sea level, while the upper limit of the area 
to be watered — eighty miles away — is two hundred 
and eighty-seven feet below sea level. The lands were 
taken up rapidly. Six towns were built. Twelve thou- 
sand prosperous fanners depended on the water supply. 
But the periodical floods, depositing on the banks the 
same rich silt by which the Imperial Valley had been 
built, clogged the opening to the main canal. Another 
opening was made, and closed in the same way. Then 
permission was secured from Mexico to cut an opening 
fifty feet wide in the west bank of the river in Mexican 
territory, just below the California line, not far from 
Yuma, Arizona. It was in September, 1904, that this 
opening was made, and the builders delayed making 
preparations to close the gap. Why not? Months 
would pass before a flood was due. 

But the unexpected happened. A cloudburst brought 
sudden flood and disaster. The rushing waters entered 
the fifty-foot gap, deserted their own channel, and 
rushed down the easier descent toward the Salton Sink, 
at the northern end of the valley. Fertile farms were 
inundated ; towns were washed away ; the railroad was 
destroyed ; the great salt works were put out of commis- 
sion ; and an inland sea was formed in the Sink. But 
this was not the worst. The flood, hurtling forward 
down the rapid descent, scoured out a channel, deeper 
and yet deeper, wider and yet wider in the silt floor of 
the valley, and the rich deposits of thousands of years 
were ruthlessly swept away. Three times attempts 
were made to stem the flood; three times the men who 
battled with the river were driven back exhausted, and 
the waters swept on. On June 4, 1906, not long after 
the failure of the last attempt, an observer looked down 

117 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

from a high tower in Calexico upon ' ' a chocolate-colored 
expanse of rapids eleven miles in width. ' ' Twenty-five 
days later he looked again. The eleven-mile-broad ex- 
panse had disappeared in a canyon fifty feet deep. Less 
than five months later, from the same spot, he saw a 
gulch from fifty to eighty feet deep, and two thousand 
feet wide. 

Through this channel the yellow waters rushed to 
the Sink, carrying with them the silt, about 450,000,000 
cubic yards. Then the stream, unable to remain at rest 
in the Sink, began to cut backward, upstream. At the 
time it was reported that, at the maximum recession, 
the river cut out a canyon backward at the rate of one 
mile in forty-eight hours. The damage already accom- 
plished and imminently threatened was thus described 
by Director Larkin of the Lowe Observatory : 

Thirty thousand acres had already been washed 
into the Salton Sink, and thirty thousand more had been 
damaged by little canyons and gullies. The entire 
valley would soon revert to primeval desert, because 
the Colorado Eiver would cut lower than the bank of the 
Imperial Canal, destroying its system of three hundred 
miles of canals, forever dispelling hope of irrigating 
the expanse of rich lands, both in California and 
Mexico. . . . Then desert, death and solitude would 
reign so long as the earth existed. 

Further, the upstream cutting-out would continue 
until the United States' irrigating project about Yuma 
would be made forever impossible, and ninety-seven 
thousand acres more of rich land would become desert. 

In order to prevent the irretrievable calamity of the 
cutting back of the waters until they reached the Colo- 
rado, the Southern Pacific Eailway Company arrayed 

118 



THE ROMANCE OF THE SALTON SINK 

all its forces to fight the river. A twelve-mile branch 
was built, orders were issued to every stone quarry 
within three hundred and fifty miles to get out material, 
and freight business on two divisions was brought to a 
standstill, that cars might be at hand to carry the rock 
quarried by thousands of men. Men and materials 
were massed at the break in the river, that everything 
might be ready ; rock, gravel, sand, clay, piles, ties, steel 
rails, and a host of other things ; a steamer, a flatboat, a 
giant dredger, steam shovels, a pile-driver, steam 
pumps, cables, spikes, picks, and hammers galore; 
six hundred Europeans and Mexicans, and four hun- 
dred and fifty Indians, as well as six hundred horses 
and mules. 

Preparations thus completed, eight immense moun- 
tain-climbing locomotives began to distribute the mate- 
rial for use. Piles were driven across the stream. 
Steel cables were fastened to these. Hundreds of men 
on a flatboat made willows into bundles, bound with 
wire. Huge logs were buried in the silt-bank, a cable 
was attached to each log, then stretched to spools on the 
barge, and the willow bundles, each one hundred feet 
long, were fastened to the cables. "Thus the cables 
were the warp, and the bundles the woof, of a carpet 
one hundred feet wide and three thousand feet long. 
. . . The carpet slipped over the edge of the barge 
into the river and sank to the bottom, where silt at once 
began to fill in between the leaves and twigs," an ob- 
server wrote vividly at the time. Then the "carpet" 
was tacked down with piles, in two parallel rows. Next 
a railroad was built in the piles. 

On the night of November 4, 1906, came the climax. 
The dam was constructed from both banks — a compara- 

119 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

lively easy task. But, at last, the central aperture, three 
hundred and seventy-five feet, was to be closed against 
the tremendous deluge of water. It was an all-night 
battle, but it was won — for the time being. 

Men breathed more freely, until the river broke 
through the great dam, and most of the work had to be 
done over again. Undismayed, the forces were once 
more assembled, and on February 11, 1907, the gap was 
again closed, after incessant work for fifteen days and 
two hours. Seventy-seven thousand cubic yards of rock, 
gravel and clay were handled. To one of the Interstate 
Commerce Commissions — so the papers report — Ed- 
ward Harriman said that he considered this fifteen-day 
struggle the greatest achievement, not only in his own 
experience, but in recent history. 

The trouble was not yet ended, but watchfulness and 
pluck finally conquered, and the Imperial Valley once 
more became the site of fertile fields and green orchards, 
of pleasing homes and prosperous towns. 



CHAPTER XIII 
ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 

IT is not necessary to go to the Saraha to find con- 
trasts of shimmering sands, parched desert and 
oases whose astonishing fertility is the gift of 
water poured out in abundance. All of these things, and 
many more, may be found in Arizona, the state of strik- 
ing contrasts, of constant surprises, of varied and un- 
suspected grandeur. Eobert Hichens has told of the 
Garden of Allah in North Africa, and has lured many to 
that land of the burning sun, but at our doors is a region 
that surpasses the novelist's garden as the mountain ex- 
ceeds the hill, or as the sun surpasses the moon. Algiers 
may have the wandering Arab, the deceiving mirage, 
the ever-shifting sands, the flat-roofed houses with a 
background of waving palm trees ; but Arizona has the 
Indian and his hogons, the Mexican and his adobes, the 
desert and its mysteries, and, in addition to all of these, 
forests and rivers, mountains and valleys, chasms and 
canyons, as well as cities in gardens of delight. 

It is possible to cross the state from east to west or 
west to east by two railroads, and to pass from one of 
these railroads to the other by a crossroad ; then there 
are highways that offer the finest inducements to the 
automobilist. To the tourist who makes use only of 
these main-traveled routes Arizona unfolds a startling 
array of wonders. But much of the best is reserved for 
those who go far afield, to the north or the south, to the 
east or the west of the ways that offer the easiest pas- 
sage through the state, and so find regions of legend 
and romance. 

121 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

It is, of course, interesting to note when passing 
Manuelito, the station on the Sante Fe that is ahnost 
on the line between New Mexico and Arizona, that the 
town was named for a Navajo chief, who, in 1855, tried 
in vain to put an end to the differences between his 
tribe and the settlers that continued until 1863. But it 
is so much better to be able to make the somewhat diffi- 
cult journey to Canyon de Chelly and its tributaries. 
Canyon del Muerto and Canyon of Monuments. The 
trip may be made by motor to Chinle trading post, then 
by horse five miles to Canyon de Chelly. Of the many 
remarkable features of these canyons the greatest, per- 
haps, is the glistening White House, built no one knows 
how many centuries ago, in a cave forty feet high, two 
hundred feet wide and one hundred feet deep, hollowed 
out of the face of a forbidding cliff two thousand feet 
high. From the top of the cliff the cave cannot be 
seen, for the great rock face slopes inward more than 
one hundred feet. 

The Eio de Chelly flows — ^when there is water in its 
bed — far down between sandstone walls. Here and 
there are odd-shaped pinnacles like, yet unlike, those 
in the Garden of the Gods. Concerning one of these, 
which is nearly eight hundred feet high, the Indians 
tell a remarkable story. In the days when there were 
thousands of people in the now desolate region, many 
of them living deep in the caves or perched high on 
the cliffs of convenient canyons, one of these cliff 
dwellers, caught far from home by enemies, was pursued 
to the precipitous banks of the Eio de Chelly. He 
despaired of hiding himself successfully until he saw, 
hanging from the top of a lofty pinnacle, a cord that 
looked as if it might bear his weight. By the aid of 

122 




NATURAL BRIDGE IN SANDSTONE, NORTH OF MANUELITO, ARIZONA 



w 







^. 3 



r-' 




BAD LANDS, NKAR WINSLUW , ARIZONA 




SCATTERED FRAGMENTS, PETRIFIED FOREST, 
ARIZONA 




MONTEZUMA CASTLE, ARIZONA 



ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 

the timely assistance he clambered up the sandstone pin- 
nacle. From the top he watched his discomfited ene- 
mies far below him. They hoped to starve him into 
surrender, but he had so many eagles' eggs to eat that 
he was able to outstay them. Then he made his way 
to the base of the pinnacle, and rode away to his home 
on the cliffs. In gratitude for his escape, he told an 
admiring audience of the spider at the top of the pin- 
nacle, which, seeing his plight, let down a heavy strand 
of its own spinning, and so made his escape easy. 
Of course there was but one possible name for the pin- 
nacle after that; the Spider's Tower it is and must 
continue to be. 

No legend is needed to add interest to the Petrified 
Forests, a district a few miles to the south of Adamana, 
the railroad town which may be made the terminus of the 
round trip to the canyon of the Spider's Tower. There 
are three of these forests where, scattered over an area 
of many square miles, are the trunks of hundreds of 
gigantic forest trees that stood in majesty in an age 
long gone. Probably they grew by a lake at some dis- 
tance from the place where they now give delight to the 
visitor who picks his way among the broken sections 
or crosses the ravine in the First Forest, nearest to 
Adamana, on the sixty-foot agatized log embedded at 
either end in sandstone. When they fell they must have 
been carried down some stream to their final resting 
place. The next step in their history was the deposit 
of sand and clay above them until they were buried pos- 
sibly several thousand feet deep. Then underground 
water displaced the wood cells by silica. Next came 
the erosion of the overlying sand and the uncovering 
of the marvels that are now like the jewels of Aladdin's 

123 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

cave. Here are amethyst and topaz, onyx and ehaleed- 
ony, carnelian and agate. Efforts have been made to 
cut the logs and release some of these jewels, but not 
much can be done in this direction when a six-inch steel 
saw is worn to a ribbon half an inch wide in the attempt 
to saw through a single log. Even then the work re- 
quires several days. It would be interesting to learn 
how the Indians managed to fashion their stone ham- 
mers, arrowheads, knives and scrapers from the chips 
of these jeweled logs. 

It is fortunate that these fallen and transformed 
monarchs have proved so hard to cut; otherwise they 
might not have been on hand in such profusion when, in 
1906, the four forests which make up the region were 
set apart as a National Monument. Visitors are for- 
bidden to carry away any petrifaction, even the smallest 
chip, but they are permitted to know that thin slices of 
the logs have been ground down to an unbelievable thin- 
ness. To the naked eye of the casual observer these 
samples from Arizona 's Garden of Jewels are a vision 
of beauty; under the microscope of the scientist they 
tell in plainest language the wonder story of transfor- 
mation from stately, erect, cone-bearing trees, to pros- 
trate cabinets of precious stone. 

One of the comparatively few men who know well 
this region of the petrified forests is a character of 
whom Arizona tells with pride^ — old Ben Lily, a pro- 
fessional hunter who finds his quarry in the forests 
south of the jeweled tree trunks. It is his business to 
kill the lions and the bears that prey on the cattle that 
are grazing in the Apache Forest and its neighborhood. 

This mighty hunter boasts that during four recent 
years he succeeded in tracking to their death one hun- 

124 



ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 

dred and fifty-four mountain lions, as well as forty-six 
bears. Since a single mountain lion has been known to 
kill enough cattle to make his damage bill five thousand 
dollars a year, it is evident that the animal trailer of 
the Apache Forest saves the cattle raisers immense 
sums. Naturally he is appreciated and is well paid 
for his work. Travelers who are fortunate enough to 
meet him when he is in a communicative mood go home 
with a fine repertoire of hair-raising stories. 

Ben Lily and the mountain lions have a rival for 
the attention of travelers in the curious Crater Mound 
northwest of the Apache Forest, and only a short dis- 
tance from the railroad and the National Old Trails 
Highway. This strange hole in the sandstone rock is 
about four thousand feet in diameter and six hundred 
feet deep. A rim of loose rock encircles the hole, and 
this is from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet 
high. Once the popular name for this mysterious feat- 
ure of the landscape was Meteorite Mountain, because 
of the belief of some geologists that the hole was made 
by a monster meteor. The story, and the discovery of 
a specimen of meteoric iron in the vicinity, led to the 
organization of a mining company whose promoters had 
tall dreams of the fortune they would find by probing 
for iron below the surface of the cavity. That they 
did not find iron was not due to the failure of the probes 
—they went to a depth of more than one thousand feet 
before it was decided that their dream was as elusive 
as that other perennial belief in Arizona, the existence 
of platinum in certain sections of the Grand Canyon. 

So far it has proved difficult to turn the glorious 
canyons of Arizona into anything but things of beauty 
and grandeur, but why not rest content with these as an 

125 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

attraction for tourists that cannot be duplicated any- 
where? On every side these water-worn channels of 
rivers appear. Ten miles from Crater Mound is Canyon 
Diablo, which travelers by rail have a splendid chance 
to study when the train passes on the lofty, spider-like 
bridge that crosses the chasm 225 feet deep and 500 
feet wide. Steep walls of limestone guard the channel 
where no water flows except after one of the rare 
but sometimes terrific rainfalls characteristic of 
this section. 

Rare rainfalls and a river canyon suggested an 
opportunity to W. R. Johnston, a friend of the Navajo 
Indians, who found his way many years ago to the 
mysterious Painted Desert region to the north of Can- 
yon Diablo. When he learned that no missionary work 
was being done among twenty-five thousand of these 
Indians, he made a clearing in a cottonwood grove on 
the banks of the Little Colorado, not far from the pres- 
ent site of Tolchaco. At first the Indians were suspi- 
cious of him, but later they were ready to do as he said. 

He was troubled because the Navajos, who were not 
annuity Indians, but earned their living by sheep-rais- 
ing, were compelled to be rovers. He found that their 
reservation is large, but that, because of the lack of 
water, it was useless for grazing purposes at least six 
months in the year. So the herders wandered about in 
search of pasture, remaining but a few weeks in a place. 
He could not hope to reach them effectively unless he 
could break up their nomadic habits. To do this, per- 
manent pasturage had to be provided. The reservation 
itself offered little opportunity for the carrying out of 
his plan. The extra -reservation lands, however, are 
watered by the Little Colorado ; that is, when there is 

126 



ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 

any water in the stream, which is only periodically. 
The bed is dry except after the infrequent rains, and 
when the melting snows send down floods from the 
mountains. Then the dry bed speedily becomes 
a torrent. 

Mr. Johnston thought of the blessing to the Indians 
if only a dam could be constructed and the flood waters 
retained for use in time of drought. People told him 
that he could not succeed in building the dam, and that, 
even if this were built, he had no assurance that the 
land redeemed by so much labor would not be taken from 
him by greedy settlers. 

The Indians were tempted to listen to the doubters, 
but, to assure them of the permanency of their invest- 
ment of labor in his project, Mr. Johnston, with two 
Navajos, went to Washington and appealed to President 
Roosevelt to withdraw from settlement the land on the 
river, near the site of his cottonwood grove, in order 
to permit its survey and allotment to the Navajos, 
according to law. The request was granted at once. 

Then the irrigation work was begun in earnest. A 
canal was dug, and a crude pile-driver was made by 
Mr. Johnston and an assistant, with the aid of a few 
Indians. Tools came from friends in the East. When- 
ever funds were exhausted the work was discontinued. 
Mr. Johnston was the tireless superintendent, and his 
Navajo helpers were inspired by his example. They 
were often hungry, but still they worked away with 
dogged determination. On one occasion, when the mis- 
sion team was hired by settlers, the proceeds were 
used to feed Indian workers for two weeks. 

When the dam was within three days of completion, 
a flood came down, caused by rains in the uplands. 

127 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

When the Indians saw their work threatened, men, 
women and children were called into service. One 
woman nearly seventy years of age worked with the 
others to save what represented so much to the tribe. 
The flood gradually worked its way around the unfin- 
ished end of the dam, and soon cut a wide channel 
through it. 

But the Indians were not discouraged. Again they 
set to work. The breach was repaired, only to be 
opened by a second flood. A third attempt was made, 
and the structure was finally finished — three hundred 
feet of stone and timber. Then all waited eagerly for 
the rising of the water. Although that season's freshet 
was not so great as usual, the water retained by the dam 
was enough to prove the feasibility of the leader's plan. 
The ditches were filled and the underground streams 
were replenished, so that a number of wind-mills drew 
water from wells driven in convenient locations. 

Then once more the cry was raised, ' ' The river is 
coming ! " As before, every available hand was raised 
to avert the threatened calamity, but in spite of stren- 
uous efforts the rushing waters tore a gap in the dam. 
Owing to unscientific building and the lack of proper 
tools, the structure was too weak to withstand 
great pressure. 

This was in 1902. In December Mr. Johnston was 
urged by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to visit 
Washington for a conference. Two leading Navajos, 
She-she-nez and Pesh-la-ki Etsetty, accompanied him. 
In Washington he was asked what it would cost to com- 
plete, in a first-class manner, the Indians' irrigation 
plant, including ditches, dam and conduits. When a 
rough estimate was made, he was at once told that five 

128 



ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 

thousand dollars could be appropriated for the purpose, 
and the Indians ' friend was asked to accept an appoint- 
ment from the government to take general charge of 
the work. The appointment was accepted on condition 
that no salary be paid. The Commissioner reluctantly 
agreed, but he insisted on sending out a clerk that 
the missionary might be relieved of accounts and 
correspondence. 

In February, 1903, a competent engineer was hired 
and the work of rebuilding was begun. A number of 
miles of ditches and laterals were laid off, and plans 
were drawn for a more massive dam. The Indians 
flocked in, hungry, and eager for a chance to earn their 
bread at work that promised so much for their future. 
One old man, who lived across the river, walked ninety 
miles to reach the work. The river was high and the 
water was cold ; but, securing a shovel, he swam across, 
and asked for employment. There was soon an entire 
brigade of old men who worked diligently. Their ages 
ranged from fifty to eighty years. By March 8 there 
were seventy-eight Indians of all ages on the pay-roll. 
They were unskilled and undisciplined, but they re- 
sponded readily to the instruction of their foremen. 
Soon the dam was completed, but again flood came and 
took it away. Since that time the work has not been 
renewed, but somehow the missionary managed to keep 
the Indians within reach of Tolchaco. A successor is in 
the place of Mr. Johnston, but he is a man of like spirit. 

''How can an intelligent man like you be content to 
remain for years among the Indians ? ' ' asked a visitor to 
one such lonely mission station among the Arizona 
Indians. The reply compelled thought : 

' 'Yonder lives a trader— a man of intelligence and of 

9 129 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

more than ordinary business ability. He has been here 
for more than thirty-five years. He came when life 
among the Navajos was not unattended by danger and 
when the discomforts and inconveniences of a home 
in the desert region were infinitely greater than now. 
He has lived here for more than a third of a century, 
and will doubtless die here. Why did he select so 
dreary and unattractive a life? To make money. He 
has accumulated a fortune. Then shall I be less zealous 
in serving my Master than he has been in striving for 
wealth? It does not seem strange to you that these 
Indian traders are scattered here and there all over the 
reservation. WTiy should it seem strange that we mis- 
sionaries accept the same sort of life with gladness ? ' ' 

The Navajo Indians have been more responsive to 
efforts for their enlightenment than the Hopis, whose 
villages, of which Oraibi is one, are sixty miles north 
of Winslow. This is the tribe whose snake dance is 
a biennial attraction in Arizona. The ceremonial is 
accounted for by a weird story, current among the 
Hopis, that begins with the coming to earth of the first 
men from the lower world to remote recesses of the 
Grand Canyon. WThen these first men went here and 
there, as their fancy led them, the Hopis turned north 
until the cold became so severe that they were forced 
to seek the South once more. There they made their 
home and planted their crop. But no rain fell, and 
they were in difiiculty. So Tigo, one of the chief men, 
decided to go back to the lower world and ask for advice. 
Embarking on the Colorado River in a dugout canoe, he 
waited to be floated to the abode of the gods. After 
descending fearful rapids he was swallowed up in the 
depths and found himself in the country of the Snake- 



ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 

Antelopes. There he learned how to force the clouds to 
send the life-giving rain to the earth. 

Before he started back to earth he persuaded two 
Snake-Antelope maidens to accompany him; one of 
them he agreed to marry, while the second was to marry 
his brother. When Tigo was safe at home the marriage 
feast was held. Among the guests appeared some of the 
Snake people, disguised as snakes, who danced with the 
Hopis. At the end of the marriage celebration the 
snakes went home, in their own forms, promising to 
bear to the under-world the prayers of the earth people 
whose acquaintance they had made so pleasantly. This, 
so the stoiy runs, was the first of the snake dances that 
have followed for ages. 

Indian legends are fitting company for those who 
go to Walnut Canyon, eight miles from Flagstaff, one 
of the most accessible of all the cliif dwellings of the 
southwest. Reached as it is by the Santa Fe as well as 
by the Old Trails Highway, several thousand people 
each year look on the thirty prehistoric dwellings along 
both sides of the canyon. Some of these visitors go 
some fifty miles farther southwest, to Montezuma 
Castle, in Yavapai County, another National Monument 
named for the chief feature among the cliff-dwellings 
to be found there, a structure built in a cavity half-way 
up the cliff, w^hich is reached by wooden ladders fastened 
to the face of the rock. The Castle is five stories high ; 
and it has many remarkable features, among them being 
the timbers which bear the marks of the stone axes of the 
builders. There is no sign of decay in these timbers, in 
spite of the lapse of no one knows how many centuries. 

While Phoenix is the usual point of departure for 
Montezuma Castle, this curiosity may be reached from 

131 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Flagstaff, the lumber town in the edge of the great 
Coconino Forest whose nearly six thousand square 
miles reach from the Grand Canyon far to the south. 

Flagstaff commemorates by its name the action of 
a company of emigrants who here raised a flag one 
Fourth of July in the early days of Arizona. Those 
emigrants must have been reluctant to leave their 
camping place by the flagstaff. It was a pleasant spot 
then, but it is far pleasanter to-day by reason of the acts 
of public-spirited citizens who have made the town an 
inviting place. 

The enthusiastic automobilist will remember it be- 
cause from here, once the point of departure of the stage 
for the Grand Canyon, a fine road leads to the north, 
through the Coconino Forest, whose pine trees are 
from 450 to 520 years old, to the Grand Canyon at Grand 
View Point, thence near the rim of the canyon to the 
hotel at Grand Canyon and back to Old Trails Highway 
at Williams, where passengers by rail change cars for 
their sight of what Joaquin Miller called ''a saber 
thrust in the rich, red bosom of Mother Earth," and 
Fitz- James McCarthy described as 'Hhis geologic 
apocalypse, half mystery and half revelation. ' * 

The highway from Flagstaff to Grand View passes 
to the east of the San Francisco Mountains, whose lofty 
peaks are treasured features in the Flagstaff landscape. 
These mountains were favorite resorts of the Indians. 
Here the Havasupai refugees fled after being driven 
from the Little Colorado, and from here they went to 
their present home in Cataract Canyon. This, too, was 
the place of the Navajo legend of the coming of the 
first men and animals to earth. 

The Great Spirit had created them, but had shut 

132 



ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 

them up in a great cave in the San Francisco Moun- 
tains. They were content with life in the dark until 
a badger saw a locust disappear in a hole in the wall 
which he had made for himself. The badger enlarged 
the hole, and fell down the mountain side into a lake 
in the Montezuma Valley. There his forepaws were 
covered with mud. This, say the Navajos, is the reason 
for the badger's black front feet. Missing the badger, 
the Navajos investigated. Finding the hole, they en- 
larged it until they could make the exit to earth. In a 
little while the cavern was empty, and the earth 
was peopled ! 

For two hundred miles more canyon and mountain, 
desert and cliff greet the travelers, all the way to the 
crossing of the Colorado into California, at Needles, 
where an unusual winter climate, palm trees, irrigated 
lands and the curious formation from which the town 
takes its name, attract those who look for a pleasant 
resting place. 

But it is not sufficient to cross Arizona once; the 
state is so large and its surface is so varied that the 
Southern Pacific route from Yuma to the region of 
Tucson and beyond should be added, if possible. 

Yuma contests with Needles the claim to be a winter 
resort; the proprietor of the hotel by the station 
blazons to travelers, by means of a great sign, the 
fact that free board will be given on every day the 
sun does not shine. But Yuma people have a fondness 
for attracting the attention of those who pass through. 
Once the popular scheme was a box like a bird cage 
perched on a pole on the station platform. Above the 
box was the sign, *'Red bat from the Montezuma Moun- 
tains." Of course, as the passengers from the waiting 

133 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

train filed by, one in each company lifted the curtain, 
to see — a bright red brickbat. Thus harmlessly the 
humor of the sun-blessed Yumaites expended itself 
until some other suggestion came to them. But most 
of them are too busy raising staple cotton and alfalfa 
to take part in jokes on tourists. 

From Yuma it is good to follow the valley of the Gila 
Eiver to Phoenix, whose claims to an ideal climate are 
superior to those of the Colorado River town; whose 
situation among the palms is so attractive that it is 
difficult to leave the city, and return to it becomes 
almost a necessity. 

The man who thinks of Arizona as a barren desert 
should study Phcenix and its surrounding wealth of 
rich agricultural land, fed by carefully treasured water. 
And anybody who thinks that the impounding of the 
water is a modem invention, should see near at hand 
the evidences of the ancient civilization of the Indians, 
who had their systems of irrigation centuries before the 
white man thought of making his garden in the desert. 
These Indian irrigation works may be seen best in the 
region of the Salt River, some eighty miles from Phce- 
nix, where eleven main canals and scores of miles of 
laterals can be traced, a system capable of enriching 
at least one hundred thousand acres. 

The building of a grand dam in Salt River that 
should duplicate and surpass the triumphs of the In- 
dians was one of the early irrigation dreams of Presi- 
dent Roosevelt, who may well be called the father 
of irrigation. 

The story of the building of the dam for the im- 
pounding of the water of that stream and Tonto Creek 
will always be an epic in the story of irrigation. The 

134 



ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 

site selected for the dam was in a great canyon which 
called for a structure 280 feet high and 1125 feet long. 
The nearest railway station was forty miles away, yet 
the material had to be transported across the waste. 
And there was no road. But the road was built, many 
miles of it by Apaches, who were proud to work without 
a timekeeper. A cement mill had to be built. Lumber 
was cut in a sawmill erected for the purpose in the 
Sierra Ancha Mountains. Electric power was provided 
by water brought in a canal thirteen miles long, but 
until this was built the power needed came from three 
engines which required, every four weeks, a pile of wood 
four feet high, four feet wide, and more than a mile 
long. And all the wood had to be carried by burros a 
long distance. 

The road built — in part by Apache laborers — in 
preparation for the construction of the dam is now 
known as the Apache Trail, from Globe to Phoenix. 
This is one of the marvelous roads of the country, not 
merely because of its splendid surface and the wonder- 
ful scenery along the route, but because of its history. 
In addition to the Apaches, convicts from the Arizona 
State Penitentiary were employed. These men were 
put on their honor. Among the thirty convicts who 
were busy, on the average, many were serving long sen- 
tences, even life terms. There were no jailers over 
them, though for six months they were far away in 
the pine forest. And only three attempts were made 
to escape! 

The road begins at Globe, the smelter town, where 
the flames leaping from the great stacks startle those 
who think they have left far behind them all such evi- 
dences of industrial progress. 

185 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Forty miles from Globe the road passes the Tonto 
National Monument, where automobiles may approach 
within half a mile of some of the cliff dwellings of the 
ancient people who first irrigated Salt River Valley. 
Four miles farther west is Roosevelt Dam, Then from 
the Tonto Basin to Phoenix come the best of the one 
hundred and forty miles of the highway. The ap- 
proach to Phoenix, through the canyon, along Salt 
River, and through bending cottonwood, makes a 
satisfying preparation for the disclosures the capital of 
Arizona is about to make. 

Arizona should not be left behind until a pilgrimage 
is made to Tucson, southwest of the Roosevelt Dam, 
and almost directly south of Globe. Here, on the Santa 
Cruz River, which was a favorite route to the north 
of the early Spanish explorers, was the site of an ancient 
pueblo. To the north and northeast the Catalina Moun- 
tains lift their rugged peaks far into the sky. Other 
ranges are near at hand. Many unique canyons are 
everywhere, especially in the Catalinas. One of these, 
Sabina Canyon, has a stream of water that falls 3700 
feet in six miles ! The stream rises in the heavy timber 
on Mount Lemnon: the Catalinas are distinguished, 
among other things, by their dense forests. First, 
at an elevation of about six thousand feet, there is a 
forest of yellow pine, the trees being from fifty to sixty 
feet high. Then at the 7500 foot line begins the white 
fir forest. 

Only the initiated expect to find in the vicinity of 
Tucson what has been called the most interesting mis- 
sion church in America. Nine miles from the city in 
the desert, is San Xavier del Bac, founded in 1692 by 
Fra Eusebius Kino. The present ornate building dates 

136 



ARIZONA'S COLORFUL CONTRASTS 

from 1783. The descendants of the Papago Indians, 
for whom the mission was begun, live in a village near 
by this old Spanish mission, whose interior is said 
to exceed in beauty that of any of the missions on 
the Pacific Coast. 

But Tucson has yet another claim to fame. On the 
lower slope of Tumamoc Hill, close to the city, is the 
Desert Botanical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institu- 
tion, whose builder and director, D. T. MacDougall, is 
conducting a many-sided study to solve the mystery of 
desert plants. How did the Indian live off the desert 
vegetation, as he must have lived in days of old? Then 
how can white men follow this example? How much 
water do these plants need for their growth? The 
answer to the last question will be of great help in 
solving the problem of irrigation. Special objects of 
investigation are the yucca, the prickly pear, and the 
Saguaro or giant cactus, frequently more than fifty 
feet high, whose dense clusters of whitish flower buds 
open for a very short time about March 25. 

From the reservation of 863 acres at Tucson and the 
plantation in the Santa Catalina Mountains the Desert 
Laboratory is making steady progress in the study of 
problems whose solution will make Arizona more than 
ever the Queen of the Southwest. 



CHAPTER XIV 
IN THE LAND OF THE DONS 

THE daring traders who sought Santa Fe in 
early days in spite of the frantic ''Thou shalt 
not!'' of the Dons toiled over the mountains 
through the Raton Pass after passing from what is now 
Colorado into the storied province of Mexico that bor- 
dered on the Louisiana territory. And over the same 
pass the traveler goes to-day, whether he uses the Santa 
Fe Railroad or the delightful highway from Trinidad, 
Colorado, to Raton, New Mexico. This will be found one 
of the most pleasing sections of the automobile road 
from Cheyenne to El Paso. Here and there are re- 
minders of the brave days of the pioneers when men 
were on their guard against Indians and Mexicans, and 
goods that they finally succeeded in getting through the 
perils on the way to Santa Fe brought rich reward. 
Near the summit, on the Colorado side, is one of these 
landmarks — the remnants of the adobe toll-house where 
travelers were held up by the lawful demands of a duly 
accredited road agent. 

Among other advantages that the highway has over 
the railroad is the continuous passage through the 
exhilarating open air, with the vision of mountains and 
valleys of Colorado behind, uninterrupted by the Raton 
tunnel, just beyond the state line. After the summit is 
passed, the descent is rapid down the mountain side 
leading well into the state that combines perhaps more 
than any other the storied past and the poetic present — 
the land of the conquistadores, of the cliff dwellers, of 

138 



IN THE LAND OF THE DONS 

the Indians ; of Mesas and pueblos and forests ; of color 
and sunshine ; of desert and fertile valley ; of ruins of 
centuries long gone and monuments of the constructive 
genius of men of to-day : a land of surprises wherever 
the visitor turns. And those who seek New Mexico 
are increasing in number, for people are learning that 
the state has satisfaction for the sightseer, the hunter, 
the fisherman, the archaeologist, and the health-seeker, 
as well as for the homemaker and the business man. 

Colfax County, in which the traveler finds himself 
as soon as he passes Eaton Summit, is reckoned one of 
the smaller counties of the state, yet it is much larger 
than several of the states on the Atlantic seaboard. It 
boasts a long list of lofty peaks, and it has many high 
fertile mesas where irrigation is unnecessary, as well 
as sections where irrigation works its wonted transfor- 
mations. Much of the construction work for irrigation 
has been done by the Maxwell Land Grant Company, 
whose story has been sketched in an earlier chapter. 

One of the contrasts for which the state is noted is 
presented by Raton, ''the Gate City of Mexico," which 
has a speaking acquaintance with the Raton Moun- 
tains, and Taos, some distance to the east. Those who 
use the railroad may seek Taos from Springer, not far 
from Raton; but those who travel by automobile will 
find a number of approaches to the city of the past at 
the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. This haunt 
of the artist is built on a plateau above the Rio Grande. 
There the old dwellings of the Indians, built on a suc- 
cession of terraces, reached by ladders, are all the more 
interesting because, unlike the cliff dwellings of Mesa 
Verde Park, they are occupied by cleanly, dignified- 

139 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

looking Indians. Near by are the conical outdoor ovens 
that are a feature of the New Mexico landscape, and 
within easy reach is the old church that dates back to 
the year when the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts ! 
But the pueblo must have been ancient then. 

To the northeast of Taos, almost in the northeast 
corner of the state, a monument far older invites those 
who delight in relics of the past as well as in the grand 
in nature. This is Capulin Mountain, which has been 
called ^'the most perfect extinct volcano in America." 
The approach to it is easy from several directions, 
but is easiest from the Ocean to Ocean Highway; this 
passes within two miles of the volcano. Indeed, auto- 
mobiles have no difficulty in going up to the base of the 
mountain itself. It is so highly regarded both by scien- 
tists and from a scenic point of view that in 1916 it was 
set apart as a National Monument. 

While Capulin is only 8000 feet high, it presents an 
impressive appearance because it rises 1500 feet above 
the plain. It is one of a number of extinct volcanoes in 
the section, but it is the largest and most significant of 
the lot. Cinders and lava and cemented breccia com- 
bine to form the cone of the crater, which is 1500 feet in 
diameter, and from 75 feet to 275 feet deep. 

Unless the traveler is proof against the lure of the 
side-trip his progress toward Las Vegas and Santa Fe 
will not be rapid. Watrous — just below Wagon Mound, 
a point of note to the wagoners who plodded along the 
Santa Fe trail because here was a Mexican custom house 
— is the gateway to Mora Canyon, which offers in its 
course of fifty miles a foretaste in miniature of the de- 
lights of the great canyon land of the Southwest. And 

140 



IN THE LAND OF THE DONS 

if the traveler is eager for canyon scenery be can find 
much to please him along the Eio Gallinas, near 
Las Vegas. 

The automobile highway from Las Vegas to Santa Fe 
leads through one of the great national forests of New 
Mexico, and from the steep grade crossing the Sangre 
de Cristo it looks down on a country rugged, varied and 
thoroughly satisfying. At the end of the route is 
the city with the long name that everyone likes to read 
once, that no one has time to repeat — Ciudad Eeal de la 
Santa Fe de San Francisco. No wonder they shortened 
it to Santa Fe ! 

On the site were once settlements bearing other 
names. There was the pueblo of Yuklwungge, as the 
Indians called it; surely Coronado cannot be blamed 
very much because he transcribed the difficult word 
Yuqueyunge. Then, in 1599, San Gabriel followed. 
Santa Fe dates from 1605, and this is, next to St. 
Augustine, the oldest city in the United States. 

Those who view certain parts of the city will be apt 
to agree that it has not changed much since Zebulon M. 
Pike, who came this way in 1807 from Colorado, by the 
enforced invitation of the Mexican authorities, said 
that it reminded him, at a distance, of a fleet of flat- 
bottomed Ohio Kiver boats. 

While it is true that there are still remaining many 
of the low adobe buildings characteristic of an earlier 
age, some of them full of historic interest — as, for in- 
stance, the palace where American governors succeeded 
a long line of Mexican rulers — there are also more mod- 
ern buildings that bear witness to the progressiveness of 
the people, who welcome strangers always, but never so 
much as when they wax eloquent about the capital of 

141 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

the state in its setting of mountains from 10,000 to 
13,000 feet high. 

Among the attractions offered by Santa Fe are the 
incomparable tours that may be taken in almost any 
direction by automobile. Twenty-five miles west of 
the city is the Bandelier National Monument, Mecca 
not only of the archaeologist but of the curious as well. 
The 22,075 acres of land within the Santa Fe National 
Forest, set apart here for the pleasure of the people in 
1916, include numerous canyons tributary to the Eio 
Grande, which in the northern part of its nearly four- 
hundred-miles course through the state is far from 
being the sluggish stream with comparatively uninter- 
esting banks that becomes familiar farther north. 

But first there is the pleasure of the jaunt from 
Santa Fe. Frequently a trip is endured merely for the 
joy that awaits at the end. Let no one get the idea 
that the journey to Bandelier is of this description. 
Over the varied plain, with sky of vivid blue above, 
while, far ahead, are the mysterious hazy mountains ; 
up hill and down, over streams that brawl and past 
canyons that give a hint of their hidden rocks and cliffs 
and cascades ! Then, unexpectedly, the eyes are greeted 
by dwellings on the cliffs, long abandoned, but still elo- 
quent of the vanished Indians who made their homes in 
these clefts of the rocks. 

Perhaps the most remarkable of the dwellings are 
along the Rito de los Frijoles. There is Tyuoni, the 
house where perhaps two hundred families lived. On 
all sides are smaller houses, and not far away is the vast 
ceremonial cave that looks like an eye in the face of the 
cliff. To this cave countless thousands of unknown 
Indians must have gone for worship in the days of no 

142 



IN THE LAND OF THE DONS 

one knows how long ago. For when the Spanish ex- 
plorers came this way, there was no more sign of habi- 
tation than there is to-day. It is comparatively easy 
to ascend to the cliff and to descend from there to the 
floor of the cave where there are hints that the place 
was the resort of those who followed the lead of their 
priests in the simple worship of the primitive man. As 
the eyes look out across to the opposite wall of the can- 
yon, over the tree tops that grow from the floor far 
beneath, it is easy to dream of those who took the same 
look centuries ago. But there is no satisfactory answer 
for those who ask who these people were, or how long 
ago they lived, or why they abandoned the homes that 
had been fashioned with such infinite pains, or what was 
the purpose of the great Stone Lions, each about seven 
feet long, which archaeologists agree are among the most 
important specimens of aboriginal sculpture in the 
United States. 

These Stone Lions are south of the Kito de los Fri- 
joles. To the north is the Pajarito Canyon, with more 
attractions, and then come half a dozen more canyons 
which are so crowded with reminders of the past that 
fresh discoveries still wait for the patient explorer. 

Large as are the dwellings of Bandelier others yet 
larger await those who go farther north to Chaco Can- 
yon National Monument. A single ruin in Chaco, 
Pueblo Bonita, has 1200 rooms, and is the largest ruin 
of the kind known in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado 
or Utah, the home of the cliff dwellers. Perhaps the 
Chaco Indians had some connection with those who lived 
in the canyons of Mesa Verde National Park, for the 
distance between the two is not great. 

"When the visitor reluctantly agrees that the time 

143 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

has come to turn from Santa Fe and its excursions into 
the canyon homes of the long-ago and the delightful 
haunts of folks of to-day, Albuquerque is ready with 
other riches in the seemingly endless presentation of 
New Mexico's varied panorama. Primarily Albu- 
querque is a bustling business center; her citizens boast 
that its merchants cover a trade territory larger than 
the six New England States. But they have time to talk 
also of their University of New Mexico, built on a height 
above the city that affords a view of unusual extent even 
for a state where the air is so clear and the heights 
commanding boundless space so conveniently placed 
that prospects of river and mountain and plain would 
become an old story if they were not so different one 
from the other. Think, for instance, of a university 
on a site ''with the Sandia Mountains twelve miles to 
the east for a background, while the view takes in the 
Jemez Mountains, sixty miles north; the San Mateos, 
seventy miles west, and the Socorro and Magdalenas, 
seventy-five miles south; while with the glass may be 
seen the Mogollons, more than two hundred and twenty- 
five miles south." If the chief purpose of a university 
is to give to a student a broad outlook, Albuquerque's 
school at once places other institutions under a seri- 
ous handicap ! 

Albuquerque also has a pueblo all its o\vn; for, by 
courtesy, Isleta may be considered a suburb of the city 
of broad views. One of the advantages of Isleta is that 
its squat adobe houses are in plain sight from the win- 
dows of the Santa Fe Eailroad train. Those who wish 
to see terraced houses must go elsewhere, but those who 
are content to look on a village that is on the same 
site, and many of whose buildings are probably the 

144 



IN THE LAND OF THE DONS 

same, as when Coronado made his visit in 1540, will 
find Isleta what they want. A fleeting glimpse from the 
train or the motor is better than nothing, but there is 
satisfaction in stopping for an examination of the 
curious pueblos and for an interview with the unassum- 
ing governor who is chosen by the votes of the people of 
the community village. There is call also for a lieuten- 
ant-governor, a council of twenty-five members, a sheriff 
and a judge, whose decisions must be approved by the 
United States Indian Agent. The Isletans are num- 
bered among the thousands of Pueblo Indians of the 
state who own nearly a million acres of land and boast 
of United States citizenship through the operation of a 
clause in the treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo in 1848, 
though they have not the right to vote. 

Laguna, another of the curious pueblo towns, can 
be seen only after a journey of two miles from the rail- 
road station of that name. But the trip is worth while, 
since it is the first stage in the absorbingly interesting 
motor ride — over a rather rough road, it must be owTied 
— to Acoma, the pueblo of the pueblos whose history is 
as romantic as anything in this state of romance. 

Acoma pueblo is a series of terraced houses of plain 
adobe construction, whose upper terraces are reached 
by the customary ladders. For one thousand feet these 
houses extend from end to end, while they are forty feet 
to the highest terrace. They are built on a precipitous 
rock three hundred and fifty feet above the mesa seven 
thousand feet higher than the sea. 

When the visitor is told that the present approach 
from the plain to the rock is easy when compared to 
the method of approach in days when enemies were 
about, he has new respect for these hardy mountaineers 

10 145 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

whose ancestors thought nothing of toiling up a stair- 
way that must have been as difficult as modern con- 
struction ladders to a lofty church steeple. That these 
men paid little heed to such difficulties is evident from 
the fact that the walls of the church are sixty feet high 
and ten feet thick, while its timbers are forty feet long 
and fourteeen inches square. All this material was 
painstakingly carried up from the mesa. The length of 
time required for this herculean task may be judged 
from the fact that forty years were consumed in trans- 
porting and depositing the earth for the churchyard. 

Three miles from the rock where the Acoma pueblo 
is situated is a strange formation that stands out 
from the plain in curiously insistent fashion — the Mesa 
Encantada, or Enchanted Mesa. This inaccessible 
height — so tradition says — was the original site o-f 
Acoma. How the Indians managed to ascend to its for- 
bidding summit, four hundred and thirty feet high, is a 
problem that can never have a solution. The reason for 
the abandonment of the fortress is equally an enigma, 
though the always accommodating tradition again gives 
its help by suggesting that the reason was the fall of a 
portion of the cliff while the men were absent on an 
expedition ; when they returned and found some of the 
women dead in the debris they sought a site somewhat 
more approachable. 

For many years archaeologists looked hungrily at the 
cliff. In 1897 one of these, no longer able to resist the 
temptation to learn what relics of an ancient civiliza- 
tion were there, managed to reach the coveted goal by 
the aid of ropes attached to a smaller rope shot over 
the rock by the aid of a mortar. After the dangerous 
journey in a boatswain's chair he groaned in dismay 

146 




I 



m U( II, \i w .Mi:\i 




THE MESA ENCANTADA, NEW MEXICO 



IN THE LAND OF THE DONS 

because the lofty surface was bare — evidently the ele- 
ments had succeeded in destroying everything on that 
exposed place ; that is, if there was ever anything there. 
Later expeditions have shown more ingenuity in the 
conquest of this supreme mystery of the mesa, but 
with no result except an experience unusual even for 
mountain climbers. 

There is, perhaps, a little more satisfaction for the 
student of history in a side trip from Gallup, a Santa Fe 
railroad town near the western border of the state, 
where Inscription Rock led to the setting apart of 
El Morro National Monument. The road to the reser- 
vation is over a high plateau, and the journey makes 
an appeal for its own sake, even though four or five 
days are required, unless there is an automobile in- 
volved. Accommodations are scarce, and it is necessary 
to camp out at water holes along the way. If the trip 
becomes monotonous it can be broken by a stop at Zuni 
pueblo, attractive especially because of its reputation 
of being the oldest continually occupied Pueblo Indian 
village in existence. 

El Morro and Inscription Rock are about thirty-five 
miles from Zufii and fifty-five miles from Gallup. There 
are really two rocks, though so close together that they 
seem one from some points of view. Both are notable 
because on the hard faces some of the early Spanish 
visitors left their autographs, as a record that they 
came this way. The student of history will always be 
thankful that they did what in a traveler of to-day would 
be an unpardonable affront to the monuments of nature. 
So many latter-day visitors to the silent rock in the 
midst of the silent mesa have shown a desire to follow 
the example of the first white visitors that the National 

147 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Park Commission has found it necessary to build a 
fence nearly a mile and a half long at the base of the 
rock. Nominally this is to keep cattle away from the 
inscriptions. But surely would-be marauders of an- 
other sort can easily take the hint that John Smith 
must not attempt to register below Juan de Onate, the 
founder of Santa Fe, whose visit was made in 1606, Don 
Diego de Vargas, the Spanish conqueror of the Pueblo 
Indians in 1692, or the eighteen other Spanish re- 
corders, the earliest of these having written their 
names in 1526. 

A great cave, a bubbling spring that is a rarity in 
this region, and ruins of a pueblo in the walls of a cleft 
in the rock, complete the tale of the attractions of 
El Morro, The Castle. 

In the Manzano National Forest, to the south of Albu- 
querque, is the last of the national monuments of New 
Mexico, Gran Quivira, which may be reached from 
Mountain-air by a stage trip of twenty-four miles. 
There are in this monument eighty acres of pueblo 
ruins, but the feature of the monument that makes it 
worth while to those who have seen other pueblos is 
the ruined cruciform church, about forty-eight by one 
' hundred and forty feet. The limestone walls still stand 
twenty-five feet above the ground and fifteen feet under 
the present surface. This does not mean that the 
builders chose to have such massive foundations, but 
that the surface of the ground is higher than when the 
church was built. 

Yet it must not be thought that all the wonders of 
New Mexico have been taken under the fostering care of 
the Government. There is ample opportunity for the 

148 



IN THE LAND OF THE DONS 

creation of a dozen more national monuments. Perhaps 
these, too, will be fenced in some day. 

In the meantime the state has other tremendous 
government monuments of a nature far different from 
any of those named in this chapter. There are the seven 
National Forests with their more than eight million 
acres. And there are the great irrigation projects 
along the Pecos and the Eio Grande. But to tell of them 
would take a book, just as merely to see them adequately 
would require more than one vacation summer. But 
what vacations these would be I 



CHAPTER XV 

THE ALLURING DESERT 

^^\ FTER a month spent in the desert, you will 
/-\ either love it or loathe it for the rest of 
•^ -^ your life." 

This statement of Director D. T. MacDougall of the 
Desert Laboratory at Tucson, Arizona, may not mean 
much to one who has not made close acquaintance with 
the leagues of shifting sand, of chaparral and sagebrush, 
of mesquite and cactus, of mountain and arroyo that 
give splendid variety to New Mexico and Arizona, to 
California and Utah and Nevada, as well as to regions 
farther north. It is easy for those to talk disparag- 
ingly of the desert whose only knowledge of it is gained 
by looking from the window of a Pullman. But let 
judgment wait until the railway has been left far be- 
hind, until days and weeks have been spent beneath the 
sky that never seemed so blue, until the burning sun 
shows what dry heat really is ; until, from beside the 
campfire, the wonderful vision is gained of stars that 
gleam with new brilliance from an expanse of sky so 
vast that it becomes necessary to revise one's notions 
of space ; of the Mill^ Way, whose name will seem at 
last the only possible description of that phenomenon 
of the heavens ; of the moon, whose incandescent light 
glows from an orb that looks as if it had been enlarged 
for the occasion. Let the carper listen intently to the 
message of the silent stars, of the hovering mountains, 
of the brooding sands, of the spectral cactus — and either 
he will be lonely ever after in the crowded city street, 
and will dream of the alluring desert through the weary 

150 



THE, ALLURING DESERT 

time he must spend away from it, or, at the first possible 
moment, he will turn his back on the lonely waste, seek- 
ing instead the bustling city, and will shudder in those 
unwelcome moments when thought recurs of experi- 
ences that seemed so trying. Yes, for the remainder of 
his life, he will either love it or he will loathe it. 

There was a time when everyone thought of the 
deserts as a terrible barrier between the Missouri and 
the Pacific Ocean. As late as 1842 the Great American 
Desert filled a large place in the imagination of the 
people as well as on the map in the school geographies. 
Little by little, however, the bounds of the desert have 
contracted, and for this contraction two agencies have 
been responsible — the water that came by irrigation 
and the knowledge that came by investigation. And 
still the limits of the waste lands grow less, for what 
that lover of the desert, William T. Homaday, calls 
''The Irrepressible Conflict" continues year by year — 
''the great struggle between Man and Desert which is 
going on over a wide empire of territory, stretching 
for fifteen hundred miles from Western Texas to the 
Pacific Ocean.'' 

But there are sections of the old desert that are the 
same to-day as they were one hundred years ago, and 
that will probably be unchanged for ages yet to come. 
One of these is the salt basin of Nevada and Utah, whose 
elevation is about five thousand feet, where rivers lose 
themselves, where salt lakes find hospitable surround- 
ings, and where sagebrush and greasewood are the only 
vegetation. This was the region that became so familiar 
to the California emigrants. 

Glimpses of such a desert may be gained from points 
on the Central Pacific Railroad, from the windows of 

161 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, and from the 
Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad. The latter road 
approaches close to the famous Death Valley, that 
curious, elongated desert of evil fame that lies between 
the Funeral Range and the Panamint Mountains, in 
California, near the boundary of Southern Nevada. 

Death Valley leads into the Mohave Desert of South- 
em California, memorable for the graceful and luxu- 
riant tree yuccas to be found in abundance to the west 
of El Cajon Pass. Frequently they are from fifteen to 
twenty-five feet high and from one to two feet in diame- 
ter. The juniper tree and the creosote bush in their 
turn help to make the appeal of the Mohave landscape. 

The Colorado Desert, farther south, extending from 
California into Arizona, offers a delightful surprise in 
the groves of native fan-leaved palms that grow luxu- 
riantly in canyons of a spur of the San Bernardino 
Mountains. Many of the trees are two feet in diameter 
and fifteen feet high. There is just enough rainfall in 
the canyons and on the mountains above them to provide 
the small amount of moisture needed for the growth of 
the trees, perhaps three inches a year. The oases where 
the palm trees grow are a pleasing reminder of the 
park-like uplands near Santiago, Cuba. 

Farther out in the desert the clay that holds the 
moisture for the palm trees gives way to sand, sand that 
is driven by the western wind in a fashion that seems 
trying until the disagreeable feature is forgotten in the 
examination of the telegraph poles that are soon almost 
cut through close to the ground, and the creosote bushes 
that are twisted most weirdly. 

Those who cannot go far into the desert, yet long 
to see some of the desert *s attractions at their best, have 

152 




SOUTH FRONT SAN BERNARDINO RANGE, SHOWING DESKRT VEGETATION, 
SAN GORGONIO PASS, CALIFORNIA 




IN THE ARIZONA DESER 



THE ALLURING DESERT 

provision made for tliem by the government. Nine 
miles from Phoenix, Arizona, reached by a substantial 
automobile road, several thousand acres have been set 
aside as the Papago Saguaro National Monument. Here 
the yucca palm, the prickly pear, the great cactus (the 
Saguaro), and other forms of desert flora grow in 
abundance. The Saguaro frequently reaches a height 
of thirty or thirty-five feet, and has a number of 
branches near the top that grow from the main stalk 
like the arms of a candelabrum. Sometimes the Saguaro 
has saved the lives of those left mthout water in the 
desert ; it contains much sap, though this is rather bit- 
ter. Those experienced in desert phenomena much 
prefer to find in their extremity a specimen of the 
barrel-like Bisnaga cactus. W. T. Hornaday, in one of 
his volumes of travel, told of the method of extracting 
water from the Bisnaga. First the top was cut off. 
The white pulpy interior was then open to view. A 
pounding-stick was cut from a near-by plant. With this 
a number of the party ** began to attack the central 
surface of the decapitated Bisnaga, and white bits of 
cactus-meat began to fly like sparks from an anvil. 
Several handfuls of the pulp were lost because there 
was nothing to contain them; but presently a cavity 
began to form. In this the meat was pounded to a 
pulpy mass, and in it water began to appear. The man 
whose hands were the cleanest was invited to take out 
some of the water-logged pulp and wash from his hands 
the deposit of desert drift; which was done. Then he 
proceeded to squeeze the pulp between the hands and 
throw it away. By alternate squeezings and poundings 
about three pints of white water soon were accumulated, 
and we were invited to step up in orthodox fashion and 

153 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

drink out of our hands, as do lost men in the desert. 
The water was surprisingly cool, a trifle sweet, and in 
flavor like the finest kind of raw turnip." 

How does the plant secrete so much water in such a 
barren region? Like all great cacti, its many roots 
spread out in every direction for fifty feet or more. 
They are very close to the surface of the sand — so close 
that they drink in every drop of moisture that comes 
within reach. Through the roots the water is sent up 
to the pulpy storehouse in the body of the plant. 

An old miner, George W. Parsons, who trudged for 
years over the deserts, has done more for the thirsty 
traveler than all the Bisnagas that grow. He had a 
vision of signposts wherever desert wayfarers might 
find themselves, to point the way unerringly to springs 
and water holes that are often within a few yards of 
those whose lives are needlessly lost. For fifteen 
years he talked of this vision. Finally the authorities 
were interested, an appropriation was made by Con- 
gress, and, with the help of the United States Geologi- 
cal Survey, Mr. Parsons was privileged to begin work 
in 1916, the object being to * ' develop, protect and render 
more accessible for the benefit of the general public, 
springs, streams, and water holes on arid public lands 
of the United States, and in connection therewith to 
erect and maintain suitable monuments and signboards 
at proper places and at intervals along and near the 
accustomed lines of travel." 

The first signpost was erected at the point where 
the desert road to Parker, Arizona, leaves the main 
Phoenix-Yuma road. Hundreds of other signposts have 
been placed in Southern California and Arizona, in the 
Colorado Desert, the Mohave Desert, Death Valley, and 

154 



THE ALLURING DESERT 

west of Tucson and Phoenix. Ultunately it is intended 
to cover the entire arid area of the country, more than 
half a million square miles. 

Mr. Parsons, in telling jubilantly of the results of 
the first year's work in fulfilment of his dream, wrote of 
his anticipation of the day when there can no longer 
exist the awful conditions here set forth : 

Noon. Into the unshaded wilderness the mounted 
sun pours his intolerable rays, making the thin air 
dance. Myriad infinitesimal shadows lie shrunken in 
under the innumerable clumps of brush — even the gray- 
backed lizards have ceased their darting and sought 
shelter from the mid-day blaze. Nothing moves. Noth- 
ing disturbs this desolation of silence but a lost man, 
crazed, bareheaded, semi-blinded, moaning for water, 
water, in that scorched and barren waste. Anguish of 
thirst, the like of which may be only once endured, has 
drawn back his lips and the sun has cracked and baked 
them. His blackened tongue protrudes. Crouched in 
the desert there drifts to his dying ears the music of 
splashing waters ; to his dimming eyes appears a per- 
fect vision of fountains and marble fonts and fern- 
embowered shade' — and oh, it is so near! Leaping, 
uttering delirious sounds, stopping to divest himself, 
now of one frayed garment, now of another, naked he 
runs to cast himself into his Eden of moisture, into 
his palace of shadows, and stumbles into the Paradise 
of the grave. 

Those who know their desert tell another romance 
of the waterless sand wastes — the story of the camel 
corps. General Edward F. Beale's scheme for the trans- 
port of army supplies. His thought was that there was 
little water to be found ; that camels need little water ; 
so why should not camels be the solution of one of our 
desert difficulties? 

155 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

The idea came to him while he was crossing Death 
Valley, in company with Kit Carson. That hardy fron- 
tiersman was not enthusiastic when the plan was out- 
lined, but when General Beale went to Washington to 
propose it, his reception was different. Jefferson 
Davis, who was the Secretaiy of War, felt that the 
proposed camel corps might be practical. 

An appropriation was secured, and in 1856 two ship- 
loads of camels were brought from Tunis to Indianola, 
Texas. The camels were duly taken to the desert. 
General Beale reported to the War Department that 
they did their work well, but the soldiers who drove 
them were not so sure. One who wrote of the com- 
plaints made of the camels said : 

He could travel sixteen miles an hour. Abstractly, 
this was a virtue; but when camp was struck in the 
evening and he was turned loose to sup upon the suc- 
culent sagebrush, either to escape the noise and pro- 
pinquity of the camp or to view the country, he was 
always seized with a desire to take a pasear of twenty- 
five or thirty miles before supper. While this took only 
an hour or two of his time, it involved upon his unfor- 
tunate driver the necessity of spending half the night 
in camel chasing; for if he was not rounded up there 
was a delay of half the next day in starting the caravan. 
He could carry a ton — this was a commendable virtue — 
but when two heavily laden ''ships of the desert" col- 
lided in a narrow track, as they always did when an 
opportunity offered, and tons of supplies were scattered 
over miles of plain and the unfortunate pilots had to 
gather up the flotsam of the wreck, it is not strange that 
the mariners of the arid wastes anathematized the whole 
camel race from the beast the prophet rode down to the 
smallest imp of Jefferson Davis ' importation. 

156 



THE ALLURING DESERT 

The complaints were so many and so vigorous that, 
when the absence of Jefferson Davis from the Cabinet 
left General Beale the sole defender of the camel 
against the mule, which the soldiers declared was the 
only dependable beast of burden, the ships of the desert 
were condemned and sold — all except those that strayed 
away from the army posts. For many years the wan- 
dering animals were seen here and there in Arizona 
and New Mexico, and to this day there are whispers 
of the appearance of some lonely specimen so far away 
that it is difficult to tell whether the sight is real 
or imaginary. 

To-day there is something better than a camel in the 
desert. — the automobile routes of travel are plainly 
marked, and difficulties are not great. The Secretary 
of the Utah State Automobile Association calls atten- 
tion to the fact that the automobilist knows ''there are 
long stretches of country with nothing but sagebrush 
and jack rabbits"; but he adds that the tourist "also 
knows that as a general rule he will make more miles 
per day than over any other section of the United States 
where the roads are not improved. ' ' 

Those who would leave the beaten tracks need to be 
careful, but their care will be wonderfully rewarded. 
Those who have a constitutional inability to be careful 
should follow the advice given in the Geological Sur- 
vey's Water Supply Paper No. 225 : 

With some persons the faculty of getting lost 
amounts to genius. They are able to accomplish it 
wherever they are. The only suitable advice for them 
is to keep out of the desert. There are safe places in 
which to exercise their talent. 



CHAPTER XVI 
WHERE MONTANA HISTORY WAS MADE 

NEAR the point where the Northern Pacific Rail- 
road approaches the Yellowstone River from 
the east, at Glendive, in Eastern Montana, 
Lewis and Clark had one of the unique experiences of 
the return trip from the Pacific in 1806. The party of 
explorers was descending the river in boats when they 
were compelled to pause while a herd of buffalo, esti- 
mated to contain 80,000 head, crossed the river. 

To the north of Glendive forty thousand acres of 
Montana land have been irrigated by the Lower Yellow- 
stone Project of the Reclamation Service. The high- 
way that follows the river affords a satisfying view of 
the work done and the results achieved, and so fur- 
nishes a good introduction to Montana for those who 
have thought of the state as anything but an empire 
of fertile lands. 

In many places sagebrush and cottonwood as feat- 
ures of the landscape have given way to grain and 
alfalfa and sugar beets. Even on the old sheep ranges 
of the regions farther down the Yellowstone, dry farm- 
ing has made the land so profitable for agriculture that 
the sheep herders, whose flocks once contained as many 
as forty thousand animals, have taken their departure. 
Soon the only reminder of them will be the many pyra- 
mids of flat stones, built by the herders to relieve the 
tedium of their lonely life. Specimens of these pyra- 
mids are visible from the river in the neighborhood of 
Hysham, not far from Billings. 

158 



WHERE MONTANA HISTORY WAS MADE 

Both Billings and Bozeman have the distinction of 
being in the midst of some of the finest land in the state. 
Captain Clark told of visiting, in 1806, the sites on 
which these towns have since been built. The explorer's 
enthusiastic account of the beautiful Gallatin Valley is 
responsible for the fact that the region of Bozeman was 
settled long before many other parts of the state, in 
spite of the fact that it was far from the route of the 
emigrant, and is surrounded by majestic mountains. 

After leaving the valley of the Yellowstone the rail- 
road still shows the way to valleys of astounding fer- 
tility. Famous Deer Lodge Valley is first seen a few 
miles after Butte is left behind. Other attractive valleys 
lie between Deer Lodge and the Flathead Indian Eeser- 
vation, far to the north of Missoula, where 150,000 acres 
of land are to be made productive by the Reclamation 
Service. Surrounded as they are by lofty mountains, 
these lands of the Indians are among the most attractive 
in the state. The peaks of the Mission Range are before 
those who approach the Reservation from the south, 
and beautiful Flathead Lake is near at hand. From 
Missoula a stage road leads north, directly along the 
western shore of the lake, passing, on the way, a cor- 
ner of the Montana National Bison Range, where 
seventy-five buffalo long had the run of thirty square 
miles of mountain and prairie. 

All along the route from Glendive to the northwest- 
em border of Montana there is surpassing interest for 
the geologist. He will pause to look curiously at Signal 
Butte, near Miles City on the Yellowstone, which is 
in plain sight either from the railroad or from the 
highway. Officers from Fort Keogh once resorted to 
this butte when they wished to send a heliograph mes- 

159 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

sage to the Black Hills, 175 miles away, or to receive 
word from those who signaled from there. The butte 
is a part of the curious Lance formation which has been 
so fruitful for the skeleton hunters from the museums, 
yielding, among other things, skeletons of the Tricera- 
tops, a curious creature with three horns. The skeleton 
in the National Museum at Washington is twenty feet 
long and eight feet high. Then there was the Tyranno- 
saurus, or giant lizard, which was forty feet long and 
when standing on its hind legs was perhaps eighteen 
feet tall. A mounted skeleton in the American Museum 
of Natural History, New York, shows what must have 
been the general appearance of this lizard of the Mon- 
tana Bad Lands. 

But perhaps in these days of agricultural develop- 
ment the most interesting geologic feature of Montana 
is a few miles beyond Helena, where, under thousands 
of acres, lies a bed four feet thick of rich phosphate 
rock. Yet it is estimated by the United States Geologi- 
cal Survey that this deposit is not much more than one- 
thousandth part of the beds in Montana, Idaho, Wyom- 
ing and Utah! Surely there is not much danger of a 
phosphate famine in this country. 

It has been one of the problems of the amateur 
geologist to decide why the name Yellowstone was given 
to the river that flows from Yellowstone Park. The 
traveler naturally looks for yellow rocks along the river 
bank, but he will not find them until he enters the can- 
yon of the Yellowstone in the Park itself. The proba- 
bility is that the Indians, who alone, until comparatively 
recent years, knew of the wonders of the canyon, were 
the first to give the name to the river. 

For centuries the Indians were the sole voyagers 

100 



WHERE MONTANA HISTORY WAS MADE 

along this stream. Then came the years when white 
men and the Indians shared the perils of the voyage. 
In 1835, George Catlin, the celebrated artist, was a pas- 
senger on a Missouri River steamer that threaded these 
waters. On board with him were a number of Indians 
who were returning to their home near the Pacific Ocean 
after an overland journey to St. Louis. Fortunately 
Catlin painted two of the Indians, Ta-wis-sis-sim-nin 
(No-Horns-on-His-Head) and Hi-youts-to-han (Rabbit- 
Skin Leggings). Those who would make acquaintance 
with natives of that early day have only to go to a 
library and examine pictures numbered 145 and 146 
in the Catlin collection. 

During the early years of steamboat navigation in 
Montana most of the voyages were made up the Mis- 
souri, but there were those who felt that the Yellow- 
stone route to Western Montana was preferable. In 
1875 Captain Marsh, on the steamer Josephine, pushed 
his way to the mouth of the Big Horn. There the 
effort was made to build a town which should be the 
transfer point for those desiring to take goods to 
Bozeman. A few months earlier Bozeman citizens had 
sent an expedition to the head of navigation for the 
purpose of opening a wagon-road. The expedition 
traveled six hundred miles during six months ; had four 
fights with the Indians ; lost three men and thirty-seven 
horses ; killed about fifty Indians and wounded nearly 
one hundred more. 

The projectors of Fort Pease, the name given to the 
settlement at the head of navigation, also had their diffi- 
culties with hostile Sioux. After standing siege as long 
as they could, they sent an appeal for help to Fort Ellis, 
near Bozeman. Finally, in March, 1876, help came, and 

11 161 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Fort Pease was abandoned. Three months later, at a 
point not many miles south of the month of the Big 
Horn, General Custer, with every officer and man in five 
companies, was killed by the Sioux, under the leader- 
ship of Sitting Bull. On the site of the battle is a 
National Cemetery where lie the bodies of 265 soldiers. 

After the battle, Captain Marsh, who was then at 
the mouth of the Big Horn with the steamer Far West, 
raced to Bismarck with fifty-two wounded men, sur- 
vivors of General Terry's battle, fought near by on the 
same day. The trip of 710 miles was made in 54 hours ! 

The country near by is full of reminders of the fatal 
Custer campaign. From Miles City to Kosebud the 
Northern Pacific follows the route taken by Custer on 
his way to the fatal field. Sixty miles from Eosebud 
is the town of Custer, another commemoration of that 
day of death in 1876 ; from here travelers in early days 
left the river for Fort Custer, to the south. 

Five miles from Custer, at Big Horn, General Clark 
passed in 1806. But the most historic of the spots where 
he stopped is Pompey's Pillar, a little farther west. 
Attracted by the great sandstone rock, Clark carved 
his name on its face : 

"Wm. Clark, July 25, 1806. '» 

Since his visit many have followed his example, espe- 
cially steamboatmen and soldiers, and now the rock car- 
ries numberless other inscriptions. A grating covers 
the most historic inscription of all, so that relic 
hunters are prevented from exercising their destruc- 
tive tendencies. 

In 1860 the Pillar once again became a historic spot, 
for in that year a member of the Reynolds Yellowstone 

162 



WHERE MONTANA HISTORY WAS MADE 

Exploring Expedition observed a solar eclipse from the 
summit. Then on June 3, 1875, Captain Marsh of the 
Josephine climbed the rock, erected a staff, bent a flag 
to the breeze, and left it there. First, however, he 
carved his name and the date on the cliff. 

Other sandstone cliffs in the neighborhood were 
asked to bear the records of explorers and trappers. 
In 1863 Henry Bostwick, a member of the Yellowstone 
Exploring Expedition of that year, finding a tempting 
rock near the mouth of the Big Horn, proceeded to 
make himself famous: 

I also engraved my name, with the date, on a sand- 
stone about three-fourths of a mile above camp. It 
will stay there for ages, and if I perish on this expe- 
dition, I have left my mark. 

After the Yellowstone is left behind both railroad 
and highway pass on to Three Forks, where three rivers 
unite to form the Missouri River. When General Clark 
was here he named the western branch for President 
Jefferson, the middle branch for James Madison, then 
Secretary of State, and the eastern branch for Albert 
Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury. Mountains 
almost surround the valley of union, rising from two to 
four thousand feet above the plain, which is itself about 
four thousand feet high. The valley where the streams 
unite is from fifteen to twenty miles in diameter. 

From Three Rivers to Fort Benton, the early 
head of navigation on the Missouri, is two hundred and 
fifty miles. And Fort Benton is twenty-nine hundred 
miles from St. Louis! The way leads now through 
comparatively level valleys, again through Black Rock 
Canyon, where the river narrows to half its former 

163 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

width, and distant less than twenty miles from Helena. 
Later, on either side, are steep turreted and pinnacled 
walls, five miles of them, from six hundred to a thousand 
feet high. This is White Rock Canyon, which Lewis and 
Clark called ' ' the Gates of the Mountains. ' ' From this 
point for thirty-six miles, the river is within the moun- 
tains. Then come the falls, and the descent to Fort 
Benton — the last stage in a stretch of river that well 
deserves to be famous. 

The first view of the Rockies that make the upper 
Missouri River scenery so fascinating is gained from 
a point near Billings, one hundred and ninety miles 
to the east. On a clear day the peaks near the entrance 
to Yellowstone Park can be seen, though they are more 
than one hundred miles distant. From the first moun- 
tains are almost always in sight — ^mountains some of 
them with strange names like the Crazy Mountain, once 
the Crazy Woman Mountain, first visible from a point 
more than fifty miles from Billings ; and the Absaroka 
Range, forty miles farther west. That name is ex- 
plained in Hanson's account of Custer's defeat. He 
says that the first news of the disaster was made known 
to a party on the river by a Crow Indian who shouted 
dismally, ' ' Absaroka ! Absaroka ! " * ' That means sol- 
diers!" explained Captain Marsh, one of the party. 
But an explorer of 1863 declared just as positively that 
the word * ' Upsaroka ' ' meant ' ' Crow Indians. ' ' Can it 
be that there is no more difference between a white 
man and an Indian than there is between "Ups" 
and^^Abs"? 

Both railroad and highway on this route lead into 
canyons of aU sorts and sizes, but all alluring, even 

164 



WHERE MONTANA HISTORY WAS MADE 

while they are forbidding. There is Rocky Canyon, 
near Bozeman, which leads to Gallatin Valley, and Hell 
Gate Canyon, with its walls of red, which leads from 
the Deer Lodge Valley to Missoula. Here the Indians 
filed across the mountains, when they sought the buf- 
falo, or when they were on the warpath, and here the 
first trappers and emigrants follow^ed where they had 
shown the way. For this reason the French trader 
called the Missoula entrance to the canyon Porte 
d'Enfer, or Hell Gate. Through this canyon went Lieu- 
tenant John Mullan, who was commissioned by the 
War Department to build a road from Walla Walla to 
Fort Benton. The story of that road is one of the epics 
of w^estern pioneering. 

In March, 1859, Congress appropriated the first 
$100,000 for the construction of the road. Laboriously 
Lieutenant Mullan guided his corps of men over the 
mountains, cutting his way through forests, threading 
canyons and climbing along mountain paths, frequently 
making explorations on either side of the road for a 
distance of many score miles. Twenty miles east of Hel- 
ena he crossed the Divide through Mullan Pass, where 
the Northern Pacific has followed him. In all 624 miles 
of road w^ere built. * 'We cut through 120 miles of dense 
forest a width of thirty feet, ' ' the pioneer wrote ; ' ' 150 
miles through open pines, and thirty miles of excava- 
tion in earth and rock, occupying a period of five years, 
and at a cost of $230,000." 

In some places grass was plentiful, but there were 
many other places where none grew. So the road- 
builder sent to St. Louis for twenty-five bushels of 
blue grass seed, which he sowed ''broadcast over the 
ground and through the woods, and over the prairies, 

165 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

at such points as were likely to be selected as camp- 
ing grounds." 

The road was never much used for military pur- 
poses, but emigrants found it convenient. The builder 
wrote a guide-book for travelers, telling them of the 
road in detail, pointing out the fact that forty-seven 
days should be allowed for the distance between Fort 
Benton and Walla Walla. 

When the Mullan road-builders toiled along the river 
valleys they discovered gold in many places, but they 
were too busy with other duties to heed the yellow metal. 
Soon, however, men came who had no purpose but to 
seek gold. In May, 1862, the first discovery was made, 
and a little later four steamboats landed emigrants and 
mining tools at Fort Benton. This was before the organ- 
ization of Montana Territory, or even Idaho Territory ; 
Idaho dates from 1863, and not until 1864 was Montana 
set aside. By that time lawlessness had become so 
great in many gold centers that a central government 
was needed. 

Sites of some of the early gold discoveries may be 
visited easily. In the Prickly Pear Canyon, seven 
miles from Helena — near the present delightful canyon 
road that leads from the Missouri River to the city — 
were rich placers. Bannock and Deer Lodge mark 
later discoveries. 

Grasshopper Diggings was not far from Alder 
Galch, the site of another bonanza. There a town was 
founded which, at first, was named Varina, in honor 
of Mrs. Jefferson Davis. But Varina is not now on the 
map, though the town is there. The name was soon 
changed because a resident who was asked to draw up 
some legal papers absolutely refused to write the name 




ff 





POMPEY S PILLAR, MONTANA 




CAHINET (.()lt<.K, IDAHO 



WHERE MONTANA HISTORY WAS MADE 

Varina ; instead lie wrote Virginia City. So Virginia 
City it was when the town became the first capital of 
the territory, and Virginia City it is to this day. 

The organization of the territory put an end to the 
most unsatisfactory conditions existing when there were 
hundreds of lawless men, such as always gathered with 
the law-abiding men at a pioneer mining camp. After 
the organization of Idaho, eighteen months passed be- 
fore the first copy of the laws was received at the gold 
diggings of Southwest Montana, and by that time the 
new territory had beeii set apart by Congress. Then 
it was no longer possible for bodies of miners to get 
together and agree — as did one party of prospectors 
in 1863, according to the testimony of the leader — that 
each member of the party, as discoverers, should be 
* ' entitled to two claims of two hundred feet each along 
the gulch — viz., a discovery claim, and a pre-emption 
claim in the main gulch, a bar claim, a hill claim, and 
a patch claim." After telling of this generous pro- 
vision, the recorder added, honestly, "I never knew 
what a patch claim was, but I think that it meant all 
you could grab, after you got the other four claims." 

When gold was discovered near Helena in 1864 the 
growth of the new city was so rapid that within two 
years the town had a population of 7500. Within four 
years sixteen million dollars' worth of gold had 
been been taken from Last Chance Gulch in Prickly 
Pear Canyon. 

Copper has long taken the place of gold as the chief 
mineral product of Montana, and the smelters of Butte 
and Anaconda and Great Falls rival in interest the 
mountains and the canyons of the western part of 
the state. 

167 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

After the rich copper region is left behind the glories 
of valley and summit once more have chief claim to the 
attention of the visitor. The highway from Helena, 
after leaving Butte and Anaconda, passes on through 
Deer Lodge to Missoula, following, in general, the route 
of the Northern Pacific, and revealing vistas of glory 
that must have been the delight of the Indians who 
roved over this favored region, as they are the delight 
of their successors. 

Missoula, just beyond the western limit of Hell Gate 
Canyon, is in a valley defined by mountains whose 
slopes, curiously marked by a succession of parallel 
ridges, show that there was once a glacial lake where 
the town is built, and that this lake, by successive reces- 
sions, indicated by the various beach lines on the moun- 
tains, decreased in depth from at least one thousand 
feet until it disappeared entirely. 

One hundred miles northwest of Missoula there is 
yet water in abundance. At Thompson Falls Thomp- 
son Eiver leaps fifty or sixty feet, carrying such a vol- 
ume that the eyes of engineers as well as lovers of 
beauty have long been turned to the stream. It has 
been calculated that forty thousand horse-power can 
be developed at this point when full advantage is taken 
of the opportunity presented. 

Thompson Falls is headquarters of the million-acre 
Cabinet Forest, one of the smaller forest areas in a state 
that has, all told, a larger acreage under the control of 
the United States Forest Service than any other state 
except Idaho and California. On the summit of a hill 
on the right of Thompson Falls is a steel tower where, 
during the fire season, a warden keeps vigilant guard, 
Through his powerful glasses he can see for a distance 

168 



WHERE MONTANA HISTORY WAS MADE 

of fifty miles in any direction, and he is able to give 
warning of many incipient fires in time to prevent wide- 
spread destruction. The visitor to the state who secures 
the view from the tower is fortunate. 

Thompson Falls, with its power plant and its forest 
warden, lies to the north of the point where the MuUan 
road crossed over into what is now Idaho, passing by 
beautiful Coeur d'Alene Lake. That curious name, by 
the way, meaning ''Heart of an Awl,'' is said to have 
been given by Indians who objected to the hard bar- 
gains driven by the French traders. A little to the 
north, on the route of the Northern Pacific, is the larger 
Pend Oreille Lake, in its setting of rugged mountains, 
where a steamer is ready to help the visitor penetrate 
to the farther recesses of this gem of the state that — on 
the map — looks like a great easy-chair, and is more than 
twice as large as Pennsylvania. 

Fortunately Pend Oreille Lake has a more pleasing 
story connected with its name than its sister body of 
water to the south. Pend d 'oreille is short for pendant 
d'oreille, meaning earring. But there are two stories 
for the application of the term earring to the lake. 
Some say it was because it is shaped like an earring, 
but others insist the reason was that Indians who wore 
earrings lived on the shore. Take your choice ; either 
explanation is good 1 



CHAPTER XVII 
ON THE TRAIL OF LEWIS AND CLARK 

" Westward the star of Empire takes its way," 
When Bisiliop Berkley wrote, was very true. 

But were the Bishop living now, he'd say 

That brilliant star seems fix'd to human view. 

From Eastern hives is filled Pacific's shore — 

No more inviting sunset lands are here: 
The restless throngs now backward pour — 

From East and West they meet, and stop right here. 

THE son of Montana who quoted these lines more 
than forty years ago must have been a relative 
of the over-enthusiastic boomer who, in writing 
a prospectus of the rich Musselshell country in the cen- 
tral part of the state, spoke of the fact that the valley 
had unoccupied lands ''enough for millions of farms. '^ 
Later he changed his figures to ''tens of thousands." 

Usually, however, the loyal citizen of the mountain 
state whose princely domains stretch nearly eight hun- 
dred miles from east to west is not so ready to revise 
his figures ; he feels that he can hardly make claims too 
great, especially if he is talking of the fertility of some 
of the valleys or of the scenic splendor of its mountains 
and canyons, its rivers and cataracts. Thus he shows 
himself a worthy successor of the Crow Indians, 
who declared that "the Great Spirit only looked at 
other countries, but lived in Montana all the year." 
The Sioux were not always on good terms with the 
Crows, but when it came to a question of their wonder- 
ful territory's advantages they had no quarrel with 
them ; these brave Indians were resigned to the thought 
of death anywhere else, but to die in Montana made 

170 




i^^ 



m^ 



■•4.- -^ H 









ON THE TRAIL OF LEWIS AND CLARK 

death delightful : the Great Spirit and the happy hunt- 
ing grounds were so near at hand. 

When Lewis and Clark wrote the story of their expe- 
dition of 1805 up the Missouri River, on the way to the 
Pacific, even their prosaic accounts were interrupted 
now and then by wondering remarks about the variety 
and beauty of the panorama that was unfolding before 
them daily. Since later explorers have followed this 
example, no traveler who makes his way across the 
state in these later days need think it necessary to re- 
strain his enjoyment or repress his exclamations. 

Many of those who cross Montana find it such a 
pleasant experience to be on the trail of Lewis and 
Clark, to look on some of the very marvels beheld by 
these explorers, that it is not at all difficult for them 
to appreciate the enthusiasm of an explorer of 1872, 
who, following the Missouri River for some distance 
toward its source, noted on a little island a, cottonwood 
tree, in whose branches was a black eagle's nest. As he 
looked at the nest an old eagle left it, soared above his 
head, and alighted on a rock within a hundred feet. 
Noting that the bird's feathers were "soiled, torn and 
otherwise old looking," he decided that probably this 
was the same eagle, whose nest in the same position, on 
the same island, was seen by Lewis and Clark in 1805. 

For those who wish to compare notes with President 
Jefferson's explorers, it is unfortunate that the Great 
Northern Railroad departs from the Missouri River — 
and so from the route of Lewis and Clark — at its junc- 
tion with Milk River, taking a route that, so far as the 
map is concerned, looks like the continuation of the Mis- 
souri, though a comparison of the two streams does 
not encourage the raising of the question which of the 
two is the Missouri. 

171 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Early navigators of these waters were troubled by 
a sandbar at the mouth of the Milk Eiver. On this bar, 
in 1866, the Luella, laden with miners and gold dust, 
grounded heavily. One of the miners, who was leaning 
over the rail watching the efforts made to dislodge the 
boat, fell overboard. There were but two feet of water, 
but the current was swift, and the weight of gold dust 
in his belt was great, so he was swept away in an instant, 
and was never heard from again. 

Not far from the same spot the Stockdale had a 
startling experience during the following season. The 
captain knew he was in the path of the buffalo herds 
seeking southern pasturage for the fall and winter, but 
he was amazed by the appearance, at Elk Horn Prairie, 
of hundreds of thousands of buffalo that crowded the 
north bank for several miles, back to the bluff. On 
came the beasts, their leaders plunging into the river 
ahead of the steamer. Soon they were packed so closely 
in the water that the steamer could not move. The ves- 
sel staggered from the shock of their impact, and the 
buckets of the stern wheel were endangered by their 
rush. For several hours the delay continued; all 
the time the buffalo were crossing the river by thou- 
sands, and were disappearing beyond the bluffs on 
the south bank. 

The buffalo have disappeared, but other marvels 
have taken their place. Milk River is itself one of 
these marvels, now that the United States Reclamation 
Service has taken a hand in making it behave. Once 
the lands along the valley were parched and dry, though 
by all precedent the river should have had abundant 
water supply from the melting snow of the mountains 
beyond the headwaters of the river and its tributaries. 
But the water went toward the Arctic Ocean instead of 



ON THE TRAIL OF LEWIS AND CLARK 

toward the Mississipjji, its natural outlet, all because 
in ages of which geology tells an ice sheet pushed down 
between the river and the mountains. But the genius of 
the water engineers was suflScient to overcome the 
handicap of the ice-made dam, while the diplomacy of 
statesmen helped to solve what might have been the 
insurmountable difficulty of making water flow over an 
international boundary line when there were folks in 
Canada who wanted it. The story of the Milk River 
Irrigation Project, which utilizes the water from the 
lakes in Glacier Park in a wonderful way, will repay 
reading, in detail. 

The first steamer whose captain pushed on past the 
north of Milk River, to Fort Benton, was the Chippewa, 
and the date was 1859. In 1860 there were two arrivals 
at what became the head of navigation. But Fort Ben- 
ton had no steamer in 1861, though the Chippewa was 
on the way. A deck-hand, wishing to steal a drink, went 
down into the hull with a lighted candle and set fire to 
the boat, with its twenty-five kegs of powder. This was 
one of the first of many disasters on the Upper Missouri. 

In those days the venturesome steamboatmen and 
traders had to brave many dangers in the navigation 
of these waters. For years Indians kept the white men 
guessing, and there were casualties without number. 
Other pests were much smaller, but perhaps they were 
even more annoying. Anyone who has experienced the 
appetite and persistency of the Missouri River mosquito 
will appreciate the conversation with a resident who 
was plowing on the bank, as reported by an explorer 
of 1872 to the Montana Historical Society: 

I observed that the mosquitoes were very annoying 
on this part of the river. * * Oh, ' ' said he, ' ' this is noth- 
ing,'^ at the same time bringing up his whip that he 

173 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

used as a fly-brush ; and smacking- his puffed and swollen 
neck and pimpled forehead with the flat of his other 
hand. ''You ought to (smack! whack!) see the mos- 
quitoes (whack! smack!) in Southern Illinois, where 
I (smack! whack!) came from.'^ 

Fort Benton was long a central point of the fur 
industry. Later it was a distributing point for the 
gold and silver mines of Western Montana and Idaho, 
as well as a gathering-point for miners who wished to 
begin the long passage to St. Louis. One early vessel 
carried more than a million dollars in gold direct 
through the Indian-infested wilderness. In 1867 thirty- 
nine steamers arrived and departed, and about ten thou- 
sand passengers were carried. One of these thirty- 
nine boats made $42,594 in five months. 

From Fort Benton a good road — the old stage road 
toward Helena — leads to Great Falls, that splendid 
barrier to the navigation of the Missouri so vividly 
described by Lewis and Clark. Eather it is one of a 
series of barriers, including one fall of fifty feet, an- 
other of ninety feet, and rapids and cascades of all sorts 
and sizes. These falls were as fatal to the migrating 
buffalo as they were to the hopes of the steamboatmen ; 
as late as 1872 a traveler noted numerous dead animals 
about the falls; at one place he counted twenty-six 
carcasses in a heap. Most of them had been swept 
over the falls. 

Northwest from Great Falls, a highway leads to the 
reser^^ation set apart for the Blackfeet Indians, who 
are fortunate in having a location directly alongside of 
Glacier National Park. There the desire to live in the 
land of mountains and lakes, where there is always 
hunting and fishing, finds ample gratification. 

The 1534 square miles now occupied by Glacier Park, 

174 




VIEW DOWN FLATHEAD RIVER FROM KNOWLES, JIONTANA 




GRINXELL (,l,A(li:ii 



ON THE TRAIL OF LEWIS AND CLARK 

once belonged to the Blackf eet, but, following the copper 
discoveries of 1890, Congress bought the district. Soon 
it was learned that the copper deposits were small, but 
that here, wonderfully compacted, was some of the 
world's most marvelous scenery. Here in satisfying 
abundance are rugged mountains, snow-clad, with great 
plains on their flanks ; several hundred blue lakes fed 
by these glaciers ; cliffs, gorges and waterfalls. Here 
are rivers that flow from the Continental Divide to the 
Pacific, to the Arctic, to the Gulf of Mexico. Merely to 
read the list of the names of some of them is enough 
to make the eyes glisten. There is Cut Bank River, 
with fir-clad shores; Two Medicine Lake; Avalanche 
Lake, whose precipitous walls rise thousands of feet; 
St. Mary's Lake, with Going-to-the-Sun Mountain be- 
yond ; Grinnell Lake, and its parent, Grinnell Glacier, 
on the heights above, and wild Ptarmigan Lake. Those 
who want to see ice in August have only to seek Iceberg 
Lake. Those who want the pleasure of naming a lake 
or a trail or a mountain can satisfy themselves, for 
so rich is the park in special features that no one has 
had time to name them all. 

John Muir came this way once, and when reluctantly 
he turned from the picture, he said : ' * Give a month at 
least to this precious reserve. The time will not be 
taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening 
it, it will indefinitely lengthen it." 

Some day Glacier National Park will be as world- 
famous as the Yosemite or the Yellowstone, and pil- 
grims from all over the world will turn thither. Fortu- 
nate will be those who see it then, but more fortunate 
are those who see it now; to them may be given the 
opportunity of seeing it again and yet again. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
" THE SUMMIT OF THE WORLD " 
THE STORY OP YELLOWSTONE PARK 

IF the Bannock and Crow Indians who guarded jeal- 
ously the geysers and lakes of the Yellowstone had 
been told that, in the opinion of some, there were 
more wonderful spots than in their prized valley, prob- 
ably they would have laughed. They know that this 
corner of what is now Wyoming was unsurpassed, and 
their admiration was expressed by the name they gave 
to it, ''The Summit of the World." Long time they 
tried to keep the knowledge of the Valley of Wonders 
from the hated white men, and in their efforts they were 
helped by the forbidding surroundings of what is to-day 
known as Yellowstone Park. For there are mountains 
on all sides — the Shoshone Mountains, the Wind Eiver 
Mountains, the Gallatin Range, and finally the sinister 
Tetons that dominate the southwestern border. 

In 1807, however, a white man named Coulter pene- 
trated the mountain barriers and entered the hidden 
region beloved by the Indians. On his return he told of 
some of the things he had seen, though he did not dare 
to tell all the truth. Even then his associates unbeliev- 
ingly referred to the valley as ''Coulter's Hell." 

On various occasions miners and trappers followed 
Coulter. They, too, were called liars by their friends, 
who thought that their stories of burning plains and 
spouting springs were figments of the imagination. 
The authors of the tales, feeling that they were not be- 
lieved, decided that they might as well lie, so there 

176 




GIANT GEYSER, YELLOWSTONE PAKK. SPOUTS AN HOUR AT A TIME, AT 

INTERVALS OF FROM SIX TO FOURTEEN DAYS. WATER REACHES HEIGHT 

OF 250 FEET 



THE SUMMIT OF THE WORLD 

soon were current stories that savored of the Arabian 
Nights. They told of a company of trappers who 
escaped from pursuing Indians ''by traveling night 
after night by the brilliant light of a large diamond 
providentially exposed on a mountain. ' ' The early his- 
torians of the valley who recorded these wonder tales 
recounted also the rumors of a region which instantly 
petrified whatever entered it. ' ' Rabbits and sage-hens, 
even Indians, were standing about there, like statuary, 
among thickets of petrified sage-brush, whose strong 
branches bore diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds 
and other gems by the thousand, as large as walnuts. ' ' 
Possibly the basis for this story was the sight of animals 
killed by the carbon dioxide of Death Gulch, where bear 
and elk, as well as smaller quadrupeds, have been 
found asphyxiated. 

In 1859 an unsuccessful attempt was made by a gov- 
ernment expedition to enter the valley. The leader. 
Colonel Reynolds, was unable to reach the basin because 
the rocky mountain barrier hindered him when he 
approached from the East, and a barrier of snow was in 
the way when he made his trail from the West. 

For twelve years more these rumors persisted. 
Then a company of Montana officials and citizens deter- 
mined to learn what was back of the stories. They toiled 
over a mountain, which they named Mount Washburn, 
and then came to a valley of hot springs. Later they 
stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon of the Yellow- 
stone. After traveling along the edge for several miles, 
two explorers made their way down to the river, more 
than a thousand feet below. Thence the journey was 
continued through the scenes that have become familiar 
to tourists, but progress was far more difficult than it 

12 177 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

is to-day. Over rocks and fallen trees they went, pick- 
ing their way along precipices, never kno\\ing what 
danger would be in their path. Once when a man was 
passing near the edge of a boiling alum spring, the 
crust broke under his feet. For an instant his comrade 
feared that he would lose his life, but he quickly fell 
backward on the unbroken cnist and so avoided the 
awful death. 

One day a member of the party was lost. Search 
for him was made in vain. For thirty-seven days he 
wandered in the wilderness, without food, except what 
roots he could find, without fire, except when he could 
kindle a flame from a lens of his field-glasses, without a 
knife, until he fashioned one from the tongue of a buckle. 
When he was rescued he was in a pitiable condition. 

The story of the '* Thirty-seven Days of Peril" as 
published in Scribner's Magazine for November, 1871, 
should be preserved as one of the classic narratives of 
American adventure. One of the interested readers, an 
Iowa man, could not put the Yellowstone out of mind. 
Soon he became one of the pioneers who proposed to 
make comfortable the travelers who sought the valley, 
and for many years he continued the service, inspired 
by the tale of Thomas C. Everts. 

Mt. Everts, two miles east of Mammoth Hot Springs, 
is the memorial of the hero of the thirty-seven days 
of wandering. 

Those who follow in the steps of the unfortunate 
Everts may enter the Park from the north, within sight 
of the lofty Electric Peak; from the west, where the 
Tetons lift their heads ; from the east, by the wonderful 
Cody Eoad, or from the south, by way of Jackson 's Hole. 
They may come by train from north or south or east, 

178 




Copyright by Ilayiies, St. P;uil 

NORRIS GEYSER BASIN, YELLOWSTONE PARK 











ELECTRIC PEAK, NEAR GARDINER ENTRANCE TO YELLOWSTONE P\RK 



THE SUMMIT OF THE WORLD 

or they may take the highway from Salt Lake City or 
the impressive road that leads more than three hun- 
dred miles across the mountains of Montana all the 
way from Glacier Park. 

There are those who try to devote a day or two to the 
3575 square miles of the park, as if in this time they 
could give even a passing glance to lakes and geysers, 
canyons and mountains, petrified forests and mud vol- 
canoes. It is not enough to see these things once ; wiser 
are those who return after the first visit to wonder at 
the colorings of the rock walls of the canyon where 
bronze and orange and scarlet unite with green and 
pearl and pink, forming a picture that rivals the rain- 
bow, and tells of kinship with the sunset; to stand in 
the Norris Geyser Basin, or its associates, where more 
than forty geysers, at regular or irregular intervals, 
spout and gush and bubble; to follow the trails and 
climb the mountains, or to camp in the forests and watch 
the antelope, the bison, the moose and the mountain 
sheep that have found asylum in a region where no 
one dares to harm them, where many of them lose the 
fear of man because man no longer pursues them. 

And after such a visit, prolonged to many days or 
even weeks, it will be possible to laugh intelligently at 
the Englishmen of whom an early visitor to the Park 
told. ''This is not a park," the disgruntled man said; 
"there is nothing here worth notice but the geyser and 
the canyon." He refused to visit Yellowstone Lake, 
saying, "It is nothing but a body of water, surrounded 
by land, which one can see anywhere, without going 
so far." He looked at the Hot Springs, and said, 
with superior air, "What does that signify? It is 
only steam!" 

179 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Yes, only steam, and color, and rock, and water, 
and trees ; only canyons and precipices, fire and brim- 
stone, springs and paint-pots, pools and cascades. But 
all these beauties and a hundred more have been thrown 
together with prodigal hand, and combined with a skill 
that makes one gasp and find kinship with those of the 
ancient day who said that here was ' * The Summit of 
the World." 



CHAPTER XIX 
FROM THE YELLOWSTONE TO WALLA WALLA 

THE crooked course of the Snake Eiver, first the 
North Fork, then the main stream, from the 
western border of Yellowstone Park, to Lewis- 
ton, the old capital of Idaho, is a route of absorbing his- 
toric interest as well as of tremendous scenic grandeur. 
The first one hundred and fifty miles of the route was 
unknown to the explorers who threaded this marvelous 
western country on the way to the Pacific, but from 
Fort Hall to the point on the western boundary of 
Idaho, northwest of Boise, was the pathway of Hunt on 
his way to Astoria in 1810, of Bonneville in 1831-33, and 
of Fremont in 1843, and of those who followed them 
over the old Oregon Trail — ^hunters, trappers, mission- 
aries, home-seekers, prospectors and miners. 

As a rule the travelers of an earlier day had so much 
leisure to enjoy the varied natural features of this 
Snake River mlderness that they wearied of their 
opportunity long before it was terminated by entrance 
on the country where the last barrier of mountains 
separated them from the valleys of the Pacific Coast. 
For the satisfaction of those who follow them in 
these later days, both the friendly highway and the 
convenient railroad lead from the western boundary 
of the Park, just over the Montana line, into Idaho by 
way of glacier-sculptured Reas Pass. The pass is 
nearly seven thousand feet high, but only a few miles 
to the south are peaks that are much higher, notably 
Sautelle Peak, which is more than ten thousand feet. 

181 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

For those who follow the Snake River, mountains 
are not the only feature worthy of attention. Others 
come in such quick succession that the passenger on the 
train wishes that he could be in an automobile, and the 
man in a motor is tempted to forget his purpose to make 
a certain far-distant point by nightfall. Henry's Lake 
is succeeded by Henry's Pork of the Snake, w^hich soon 
has an immense waterfall, and, a mile farther up stream 
a fall still higher and more imposing. Between the 
falls is a canyon whose walls are 250 feet deep. Warm 
River with its swirling waters is near until the route 
passes out of the Douglas firs of the Targhee National 
Forest. Soon, to the east, the Tetons show their rugged 
peaks, one of which, Grand Teton, has been conquered 
by mountain climbers but two or three times. And all 
this, with numberless attractions of interest that must 
take minor place on this compelling trip, within a dis- 
tance of thirty or forty miles ! 

Still more canyons and waterfalls mark the route 
to the south. St. Anthony is built by a narrow canyon 
where the Snake narrows to fifty feet and the rapidly 
falling water churns through the straitened passage, 
though the stream widens to 800 feet immediately below. 
Idaho Falls has a similar narrow canyon, formed by the 
constant recession of the falls into the lava that overlies 
the whole country roundabout. The pioneers had 
reason to remember this point, because a man who 
had an eye to the main chance built across the canyon 
a toll-bridge that brought him in a good income. 

Irrigation ditches, fruitful orchards and fertile 
fields, then the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, with its 
miles of sagebrush that show what all the land would 
be but for irrigation, divide the attention for many 

182 



YELLOWSTONE TO WALLA WALLA 

miles. The headquarters of the Fort Hall Reservation 
are at Fort Hall, built on the site of the fort that marked 
the junction of the trail to Oregon and the trail from 
Utah to California. This fort was visited in 1836 by 
Dr. Whitman, pioneer missionary to Oregon, whose 
name has been connected in popular story with the 
winning of the Oregon country for the United States, 
though many sober-minded historians insist that his 
winter's ride from Walla Walla to St. Louis, the first 
part of it to Fort Hall, did not have the importance that 
has been assigned to it. 

What a chapter of stories both grave and gay could 
be written of the pioneers who labored through the 
Southern Idaho country ! Unfortunately there was no 
historian to tell of the men and women who passed Fort 
Hall. Rarely, however, a record was made by some 
member of a party who was not afraid of the pen. Most 
of the stories are so prosaic that it is evident the 
writers were unconscious of the heroism of those who 
journeyed over the mountains to Oregon. One humble 
traveler told, however, of a maiden lady in his company 
who was determined to keep up her particular home 
ways. She had fifteen flower pots with house plants 
when she started, but she had to part with them in 
the desert. "She had a looking-glass and used it as 
regularlj'" as if she had been at home." She had a 
broom, and whenever camp was made she always swept 
a place and put down a piece of rag carpet. Further, 
she would set her table regularly and carried all the 
way her grandmother's silver tankard, Avith which she 
decorated her table. If there was a flower to be found, 
or even a bunch of grass, she always had a bouquet in 
that tankard. 

183 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

It was a woman who told another typical incident of 
the days of the forties : 

A party of four men who were riding on horseback 
joined our company when we were on the plain. I 
overheard one of them say one night, ' ' Sir, I am a true 
laborer, earn that I eat, get that I wear." So I called 
out, ' * Who is quoting Shakespeare out here in the wil- 
derness?" "WHiat woman can there be out here who 
knows Shakespeare when she hears it!" said he. So 
after that we were great friends. He had once been a 
college professor in Edinburgh, Scotland, very learned 
in everything and could speak seven languages, yet he 
was jogging along on an old mule and looking like 
a scarecrow. 

All the way from Fort Hall and Pocatello to Sho- 
shone Falls and beyond the Snake flows through what is, 
with one exception, the greatest lava plain in the coun- 
try, with an area of perhaps twenty thousand square 
miles. The thickness of the bed is not known, though 
at Shoshone Falls, where the river makes a perpendicu- 
lar descent of two hundred and ten feet, it is seen to 
be nearly seven hundred feet from the surface to the 
lower limit. There are many cataracts and rapids 
almost without number from this point to the junction 
of the river with the Clark Fork of the Columbia, but 
all of them are of comparative insignificance in com- 
parison with the parent of them all. 

Snake River, with its length of nine hundred miles, 
and its tributaries, is one of the tremendous factors in 
the irrigation of land that would otherwise be given 
up to sagebrush and barren lava wastes. The Minidoka 
Project and the Payette-Boise Project, both among the 
country's most spectacular water schemes, are on the 
route described in this chapter. The Arrowroot Dam at 

184 



YELLOWSTONE TO WALLA WALLA 

Boise is seventy-one feet higher than the famous Roose- 
velt Dam in Arizona. Through the beneficent influence 
of the water impounded here Boise is becoming one of 
the greatest potato sections in the country. 

All the country is of volcanic origin, and is full of 
reminders of this origin. Near the banks of the river, 
at many places, are what have been called volcanic 
bombs, elongated projectiles that in some remote age 
were shot as plastic lava from the crater of a volcano. 
In falling from a great height they took the shape that 
makes them resemble nothing so much as a snake. Thus 
they are fit companions for the river whose tortuous 
channel gave it the name Snake, though some have 
called it Shoshone. 

Fortunately the name Shoshone still clings to the 
falls of which an explorer of the United States Greo- 
logical Survey said in 1868 that they were among the 
greatest of America's cataracts. Though the volume of 
water is not so great as that of Niagara, the approach 
and the surroundings are far more impressive. Above 
the falls the river, two hundred yard wide, is deep down 
in a dark canyon. Cataract follows cataract for some 
distance, but all are insignificant in comparison with 
the great fall itself, which is in the shape of a horseshoe, 
more than one thousand feet around the rim. 

In the country between Fort Hall and Shoshone 
Falls, a pioneer of 1849 had an unusual experience that 
gave him a thorough understanding of the lava forma- 
tions as well as of the sagebrush. With four compan- 
ions he tried to cross the river to secure a horse from 
Indians. They made their way to the water by means 
of a steep ravine cut in the lava cliff. Though it was 
dark when they reached the river, they decided to ven- 

185 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

ture into the rock impeded, rapid water. After tying 
their shirts and moccasins to their necks, and hiding the 
remainder of their clothing, they entered the stream. 
The trip was made without adventure, and they re- 
turned in safety. 

But one of the men failed to find his clothing when 
he landed. Chilled through, he decided to approach 
one of the eampfires near by. ' ' My wardrobe consisted 
of one cotton garment and a pair of moccasins," he 
described his predicament, "Though the season was 
midsummer, the night was cold, for we were more than 
four thousand feet above the sea, and a sharp wind was 
blowing from snow peaks that were within plain sight in 
the daytime. I had to move very briskly to keep warm ; 
and for fear of losing my direction, I followed a straight 
course without turning aside for ravines, stones or 
sagebrush. In a few minutes I saw that I had selected 
the wrong fire. But I went on. It proved to be eight 
miles to the camp. The man on guard heard me ap- 
proaching and called out, *No Indians in camp at 
night.' When I went nearer he called out, 'Stop, or 
I'll shoot. No Indians in camp at night.' 'I'm as 
white as you are!' I called to him. 'White men 
don't go about that way,' he replied. 'This one does, 
but I have had enough of it,' I said. Then I was 
received with laughter." 

In the morning he found his clothes in another ravine 
than that in which he had searched for them. 

"No need to ask me if I know what sagebrush is 
after that night," he said, grimly, when telling the story. 

Not far from the same spot the Snake proved disas- 
trous to the party of Wilson Price Hunt, who was in 
charge of the land expedition to Astoria. In October, 

186 



YELLOWSTONE TO WALLA WALLA 

1810, the men attempted to ascend the rapids where 
rocks made the passage most difficult. A boat was 
wrecked and one of the men was drowned. At this 
point the river was but thirty feet wide, and the lava 
walls w^ere two hundred feet high. The waters within 
were so troubled that Hunt called the spot the Caldron 
Linn. Exploring parties sent down the river reported 
that for many miles it "presented the same furious 
aspect, brawding and boiling along a narrow and rugged 
channel, between rocks that rose like walls. ' ' 

From this point they had to travel nearly five hun- 
dred miles on foot. 

In the days before the railroad was built through 
the Snake River valley from Ogden to Boise, traveling 
was expensive. The stage fare between the towns was 
$100 for the distance of less than four hundred miles. 
After the completion of the Central Pacific Railroad 
one man figured that it was cheaper for him to go to 
Walla Walla by rail to San Francisco, by steamer to 
Portland, and up the Columbia, than to go overland by 
direct route. 

Boise, the successor of Lewiston, which originally 
had the honor of being the capital of Idaho Territory 
when Montana and part of Wyoming were included in 
its bounds, is so beautifully located that the citizens 
feel it would be worth even a trip by stage for a few 
hundred miles to reach it. Now that it is not only 
on the railroad but on the main route for automobile 
travel from Kansas City to Portland, they feel very 
properly that there is no excuse for passing by its 
whole-hearted invitation to stop and learn what Idaho 
hospitality is. 

At Boise they tell interesting stories of the days of 

187 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

1862 when the first gold discoveries in Idaho were made 
in the country to the south. One of the richest quartz 
lodes was found unexpectedly. The story is that two 
men, on the way to Boise, were talking of quartz. One 
man said he did not know quartz when he saw it. His 
companion therefore picked up several pieces from the 
trail and showed them to him. The quartz he dropped 
into his pocket without thinking. Some time later the 
men were at Bannock, where they were speedily in 
difficulty because their horses were stolen and they were 
left penniless. Idly the man who had the quartz showed 
it at the express office. The eye of the agent glistened. 
' 'I'll buy you a horse if you'll take me to the spot where 
you found that rock," he said. The place was found, 
the mother lode on the hill was discovered, and soon 
the agent and his guide were taking large dividends 
from the mine. 

Unfortunately the story does not tell how fared the 
man for whom the quartz was picked up ! 

All along from Boise to Lewiston — named for the 
explorer Lewis — the Snake continues its course through 
volcanic countiy, flowing at times through canyons, fre- 
quently choosing its way over rocks, and always making 
a trip by its waters worth while. Mountains near by 
and farther away, as well as tributary streams and 
bordering forests, give variety to the expedition to the 
town that is close to the site of the station where Dr. 
Spalding began his work among the Indians at Clear- 
water. Here a pioneer mill was built, whose millstones 
were brought forty miles from the quarry on a raft, and 
here the first printing press in the Oregon country was 
set up. That press is preserved in the rooms of the 
Historical Society at Portland, while one of the mill- 



YELLOWSTONE TO WALLA WALLA 

stones is among the treasures of the University of 
Idaho at Moscow. 

Some of the best of Washington's scenic highways 
lead from Lewiston to Walla Walla, while steamers 
reach from this head of navigation down the Snake and 
Columbia rivers to Portland. The overland route 
passes through canyons and hills, past great grain 
farms and fruit orchards, over a divide that affords 
a view for miles back toward the Snake River. The 
final stage is twenty miles over the macadam Dixie road, 
through the famous wheat fields and apple orchards of 
Walla Walla County to Walla Walla, the Indians ' city 
of many waters, so named because, in the mountains 
near by dozens of streams have their source. 

From Walla Walla many admirable highways lead 
in all directions. On one of these, the Inland Empire 
Highway, seven miles from the city, at Whitman Sta- 
tion, is the monument to Marcus Whitman, the pioneer 
missionary who, with his wife and children and a num- 
ber of others, was killed by the Cayuse Indians among 
whom they had lived so many years because, when the 
Cayuse were dying of a strange sickness, they declared 
that Whitman was killing them off that he might own 
the land for the settlers who were flocking to the 
beautiful valley ! 



CHAPTER XX 
FROM GREAT SALT LAKE TO SACRAMENTO 

ONE who sees Salt Lake City to-day in its glori- 
ous setting of mountains can hardly credit the 
fact that on July 24, 1847, when Brigham 
Young came to the chosen site for the City of the Saints, 
one of the three women with this advance party said, 
''Weak as I am, I would rather go a thousand miles 
farther than stop in this forsaken place." 

There were many weary days before the new city 
began to present a homelike aspect. The sight of the 
Stars and Stripes waving from Ensign Peak on a spur 
of the Wasatch Eange, was the first satisfaction for the 
homesick; though the territory was still a part of 
Mexico, the leader of the expedition proposed to fly 
the flag of his country. Then, little by little, difficulties 
were overcome, the broad streets were lined with houses, 
and the lands along the Jordan were cultivated. Less 
than a year after the settlement, a plague of Rocky 
Mountain crickets threatened to devastate the growing 
crops that made the valley begin to look inhabited. 
There seemed to be no relief, when suddenly a great 
flock of gulls swooped down from the sky, and devoured 
the crickets. To this day the gull is looked upon with 
veneration in Utah. 

There is no better spot from which to gaze on the 
widespread beauty of Salt Lake City and its surround- 
ings than from the side of the staff on Ensign Peak, 
where the flag still floats on holiday occasions. Below 
are the farms and orchards in the valley of the Jordan. 

190 



GREAT SALT LAKE TO SACRAMENTO 

East of the city are the snowy peaks of the Wasatch 
Range, while over the Jordan the heights of the Oquirrh 
Range stretch far above the snow line. Far beyond the 
city lies in majesty Great Salt Lake. Here and there 
among the mountains are canyons and chasms and 
miracles of rock carving. And the central feature of 
the picture is the city itself, which is as remarkable as 
its surroundings. 

Ample provision for seeing the details of the beauti- 
ful country both south and north of Salt Lake City 
is made not only by admirable roads but also by inter- 
urban lines that extend two hundred miles in all. The 
Garden of Utah, south of the city, is traversed by one 
of these roads, which is on the banks of Jordan between 
the Wasatch and the Oquirrh and goes past Utah Lake, 
a body of fresh water that is one of the richest gems of 
Utali's varied jewel casket. The glaciers of Mount 
Timpanogas feed the blue lake which in turn gives the 
Jordan its waters that make the bordering acres a 
billowy sea of green. To the west of the Jordan, not 
far from the south shore of the lake, the remarkable 
open cutting copper mines in Bingham Canyon are a 
curiosity that should be seen before the return to Salt 
Lake City. 

For the thirty-seven-mile trip along the Wasatch 
Range from Salt Lake City to Ogden, railroad, highway 
and electric line give unrivaled opportunity for seeing 
the rugged country. An enthusiastic motorist has called 
the route between the cities ''America's best forty miles 
of scenery." His boast is not without reason. There 
is a warm lake, fed by springs, and there is a valley 
made fertile by the deposits in the bed of the ancient 
Lake Bonneville, the great fresh-water lake that once 

191 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

covered a large part of Utah as well as parts of Nevada 
and Idaho. The upper beach line on the mountains on 
the left indicates that the road was once eight hundred 
feet under water. A lower beach line, plainly visible, 
shows that the lake was lowered three hundred feet 
when an outlet was cut to the north, so that the waters 
of the lake flowed through the Snake to the Columbia. 
Geologists tell how the elevation of the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains became responsible for cutting off moisture 
from the Pacific Ocean, and in consequence Lake Bonne- 
ville slowly dried up until it became the Great Salt 
Lake of to-day. 

One of the choice views on the route is found a short 
distance from Ogden on the high ground near the center 
of the peninsula that juts into the lake. All about 
are lands that less than a generation ago could have 
been bought for five dollars an acre, for they were 
thought to be barren sand ; to-day they are worth five 
hundred dollars an acre or more. 

Far to the right, beyond Ogden, is the pass in the 
Wasatch Eange where enters from the east the irriga- 
tion canal that is responsible for this spectacular change 
in value, as well as the old trail of the emigrants, and its 
successor, the Central Pacific Eailroad. This Weber 
Eiver Canyon is the one possible entrance through the 
barren mountains. 

Ogden offers a valuable extension of the ride from 
the south in the trip through Ogden Canyon to Ogden 
Valley, once a bay of Lake Bonneville, now a secluded 
mountain valley about forty miles square. At one point 
the canyon is so narrow that highway and electric car 
line have little room to spare, while the limestone walls 
tower several thousand feet high on either side. There 

192 



GREAT SALT LAKE TO SACRAMENTO 

is an artificial waterfall at one point high up on one 
of the rocky walls of the canyon, fed by a stream 
from one of the sixteen artesian wells in the valley 
beyond the source of Ogden's water supply. 

Long distance highways lead from Ogden to Yellow- 
stone Park, to Pocatello, Idaho, to Twin Falls, Idaho, 
to Evanston, Wyoming, and to Reno, Nevada, and 
thence to San Francisco. The latter route, along the 
line of the Central Pacific, is the Lincoln Highway. This 
highway rounds the lake to the south, as did the rail- 
road until the Lucin Cut-off was built directly across 
the lake, so saving forty-two miles of difficult travel, and 
eliminating 4300 degrees of curvature. 

The lake thus boldly crossed was long a mystery. 
In 1689 Baron Lahontan, in telling the story of his dis- 
coveries in the southwest, spoke of the Mozeemlek In- 
dians who described to him a lake of salt water thirty 
leagues wide with three hundred leagues of shore line. 
The Baron's map showing the lake is one of the curious 
documents of early days. Washington Irving, in the 
volume describing Captain Bonneville's journey across 
the Rocky Mountains, published a map that called the 
body of water Lake Bonneville. A map in Bradford's 
Comprehensive Atlas, published in 1835, spoke of it as 
Lake Timpanogas. John Bidwell, who went to Califor- 
nia with the first emigrant train in 1841, wrote in The 
Century (November, 1890) : 

Our ignorance of the route was complete. We 
knew that California lay west, and that was the extent 
of our knowledge. Some of the maps consulted, sup- 
posed of course to be correct, showed a lake in the 
vicinity of where Salt Lake now is ; it was represented 

13 193 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

as a long lake, three or four hundred miles in extent, 
narrow and with two outlets, both running into the 
Pacific Ocean, either apparently larger than the Missis- 
sippi Eiver. An intelligent man with whom I boarded 
. . . possessed a map that showed these rivers to be 
large, and he advised me to take tools along to make 
canoes, so that if we found the country so rough that 
we could not get along with our wagon we could descend 
one of these rivers to the Pacific. Even Fremont knew 
nothing about Salt Lake until 1843, when for the first 
time he explored it and mapped it correctly. 

The rails of the Western Pacific Railroad, which lead 
directly west from Salt Lake City, along the southern 
shore of the lake, rest for many miles on a layer of 
salt from six to eight feet in thickness, until the road 
comes to the Toano Mountains, that were the western 
limit of the old Lake Bonneville. This was the route 
of the overland emigrant trails. The Central Pacific, 
after crossing the lake, is joined by the newer road, 
some distance on in Nevada. 

Nevada takes its name from the Sierra Nevada 
Mountains ; the name means snowy. The salt incrusta- 
tions on the desert as well as the snow on some of the 
peaks that rise from ten to eleven thousand feet make 
the name peculiarly appropriate. The railroads wind 
in and out of less imposing peaks of from four thousand 
to six thousand feet, so that the traveler is apt to forget 
that in the sixty-five groups or chains of mountains 
in the state there are peaks as high as thirteen thou- 
sand feet. 

Even amid the salt, the sand and the mountains, 
there are bits of agricultural land. Near Wells there 
are great herds of cattle and sheep, while near Winne- 

194 




Looking down ogden canyon 




PAMSADE CANVOX, NK\ ADA 



GREAT SALT LAKE TO SACRAMENTO 

mucca, along the Humboldt Kiver, are comparatively 
fertile districts. Tributary to the Truckee-Carson 
Reclamation Project, near the western border, there 
is pleasing evidence of agricultural prosperity. These 
fertile lands are visible from the Central Pacific and 
from the Lincoln Highway. 

Wells was a longed-for spot in the days of the emi- 
grants. In a meadow not far from the railroad are 
scores of springs, varying in size from a few inches 
to three or four rods across. These flow most freely 
in the autumn months, but at all times there is 
ample water. 

In these springs one of the branches of the curious 
Humboldt River has its source, but the main source is 
far to the northeast. This oddity among rivers begins, 
has its entire course of about one thousand miles, and 
ends within one state, and is the longest river in the 
country of which this is true. Fifteen thousand square 
miles are drained by the river and its tributaries. It is 
a high altitude river ; its source is seven thousand feet 
high, and it loses itself in Humboldt Lake, near the west- 
ern border of the state, at forty-one hundred feet above 
the sea. Further, it furnishes the only possible passage 
from the east to the west through the Humboldt Moun- 
tains ; this explains the neighborliness of the two rail- 
roads for one hundred and fifty miles from Wells to 
Winnemucca. At this point they separate, because 
they are bound for different passes across the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains. 

There are further strange facts about the Humboldt 
River. Its average width is but forty feet, and its 
average depth less than two feet. Humboldt Lake, 

195 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

into which it empties, has no outlet, except in the 
season of melting snow, when the waters overflow into 
Carson Sink. 

The stream was unknown to white men until 1828, 
when it was seen by some fur hunters. The name was 
given to it by General Fremont in 1844. 

For many miles the sluggish waters of the Humboldt 
have cut a channel through the debris left by Lake 
Lahontan, the prehistoric body of fresh water that 
stretched for 250 miles from north to south and for 180 
miles from east to west. An enormous mountainous 
island was enclosed by the water. Close observation 
of some of the mountain sides visible from the rail- 
road show beach lines of the old lake that was about 
four hundred feet deep in the Carson district and some 
nine hundred feet deep at Pyramid Lake, whose waters 
are close to the California boundary, and between 
the diverging tracks of the Central Pacific and the 
Western Pacific. 

Pyramid Lake, thirty miles long, with its encircling 
rim of rugged, snow-capped mountains, its bird reser- 
vation, Anaho Island, where pelicans live undisturbed, 
and the Pyramid Rock, make the ride thither by a branch 
railroad a worth-while trip for any tourist. 

From the south, into Pyramid Lake, flows Truckee 
River, whose course is brief though varied. At first it 
flows through the foothills, with thick forests about it, 
but it enters the Truckee Meadows at Reno, the old 
Lakes Crossing of the pioneers, who here heaved a sigh 
of relief when they left the desert waste behind them and 
saw the clear water and the green slopes ahead. 

The modern tourist by automobile who approaches 
California by the Salt Lake City Route has offered to 

196 



GREAT SALT LAKE TO SACRAMENTO 

him an embarrassment of riches when he approaches the 
California line. He can keep on through Truckee, rush- 
ing on toward Sacramento by the route paralleling the 
Southern Pacific Railroad — then he will have the disad- 
vantage of passing by Lake Tahoe unless he makes a 
side trip, and will have the advantage of the railway 
passenger who must ride through weary miles of snow- 
sheds on both sides of the summit; he can go south 
from Reno to Carson City and on by the King's Canyon 
Grade to Glenbrook, on the Nevada shore of Lake 
Tahoe, of which Isabella Bird said, *'I have found a 
dream of beauty at which one might look all one 's life 
and sigh." Then it is well worth while to take the 
steamer for the seventy-two-mile trip around the shore 
line of the lake, passing over the spot where soundings 
have been made to a depth of two thousand feet, and no 
bottom found, defining the limits of Emerald Bay, that 
priceless gem hidden away near the southeast section 
of the lake, looking up now at the lofty Mt. Tallac and 
again at Pyramid Mountain, or at others of the prodigal 
array of peaks that surround the lake . 

At Glenbrook the car may be taken once more and 
the Nevada shore skirted to the south end of the lake. 
Then a short detour leads half-way around the three- 
mile-long Fallen Leaf Lake — a lake whose charm is so 
great that the region would be famous even without 
Lake Tahoe. 

And there are scores of other lakes near by. Echo 
Lake can be reached by a short detour from the Lincoln 
Highway. Soon the Supervisor of the El Dorado For- 
est hopes to have a practicable automobile road circling 
among some of the lakes, to the shore of Tahoe and 
back again. A lover of the trail on learning of his plan 

197 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

said he hoped it would not be carried out ; it would spoil 
a trail trip to Desolation Valley and the lakes there and 
beyond that now wait in primitive splendor the ap- 
proach of those who take what this enthusiast asserts is 
the one sensible means of mountain travel. 

There is an easy climb of fourteen hundred feet from 
the meadows south of Lake Tahoe to Summit Pass, 
7630 feet. A clamber over the rocks at the roadside, 
and a lookout station, erected by the Forest Service for 
the convenience of travelers, is reached. It will be 
found a difficult task to turn away from the prospect 
from this eminence — the lakes stretching away toward 
Truckee, the mountains of California and Nevada, the 
meadows, where cattle graze and pine trees lift their 
heads. How the pioneers who toiled this way must have 
rejoiced at the sight! A judiciously placed signboard 
directs the thoughts to their privations : 

Emigrant Trail Marker Number 3. Abandoned for 
a smoother and lower grade and long since forgotten. 
Just below may be seen the road over which the travel- 
worn emigrant gained the summit of the Sierra Nevada. 
A view of the ancient path is worth while. Picture in 
your mind the straining ox team, drawing heavy- 
laden wagons over steep and rocky ways. Compare 
the comfortable modes of travel of to-day with those 
of yesterday. 

For many years after the emigrant ceased to pass 
this way in large numbers this was the teaming road 
between Carson City and Sacramento. During the sil- 
ver excitement of the late sixties and early seventies 
freighters were always in evidence. *'I remember well 
how thick they were," a reminiscent driver said. ''All 
day long there was a continuous stream of wagons. If, 



GREAT SALT LAKE TO SACRAMENTO 

for any reason, one of the outfits fell out of line the 
driver might have to wait by the roadside for hours 
before he could find place in the procession once more. 
Stages had to travel by night to make the distance. ' ' 

By easy grades this southern road to Sacramento 
passes through pine forests, along the gorge of the 
South Fork of the American River, past Lover's Leap, 
a great rock seven thousand feet high, where glaciation 
marks are plain, on to Placerville, the pioneer mining 
town, long known as Hangtown, where the business 
street, although lined with modem buildings, still has 
the picturesque appearance of days gone by, while the 
residence streets on the hillsides follow the planless, 
helter-skelter paths used by the miners in their trips 
to the valley. Above the town is old Sacramento Hill, 
with its tremendous cutting, from which millions of 
dollars in gold were taken. Eight miles to one side old 
Coloma keeps watch over the spot on the American 
where Edward Marshall found the first gold in Sutter 's 
mill-race — a discovery of which his companion, Aza- 
riah Smith, wrote in his diary : 

Sept. 9, 1847. Last Wednesday I took a job at Sut- 
ter to dig a race at 121/2 cents a cubic yard. We expect 
to make more than $10 a day. 

Sunday, Jan. 30, 18-48. This week Mr. Marshall 
found specimens of (as we suppose) gold, and he has 
gone to the fort for the purpose of finding out what 
it is. It is found in the race in small pieces ; some weigh 
as much as a five-dollar piece. . . . 

Sunday, Feb. 6th. Marshall has returned with the 
fact that the metal is gold. 

And this was the matter-of-fact record of an event 
that led John Bidwell, pioneer of 1841, to say: 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

It is a question whether the United States could have 
stood the shock of the great rebellion of 1861 had the 
California gold discovery not been made. . . . The 
hand of Providence so plainly seen in the discoveiy 
of gold is no less manifest in the time chosen for 
its accomplishment. 

On a height overlooking the valley a grateful state 
has built a heroic statue to the discoverer. His out- 
stretched hand points to the scene of his adventure, and 
his back is turned to the lands which El Dorado County 
is fast developing into orchards and farms, making 
ready for the day when she will be a leader in wealth 
more enduring than gold. 

When, a few months after Marshall's find in the 
mill-race, the harbor of San Francisco was crowded 
with sailing vessels that had brought gold-mad treas- 
ure-seekers around the Horn, many of them ascended 
the river to Sacramento, not far from Coloma; these 
vessels had no difficulty in pushing through, though they 
drew as much as fourteen feet of water. To-day, how- 
ever, shallow draft stern-wheel steamers, specially con- 
structed for the Sacramento Eiver, do not find it easy 
to reach the capital city of the state. Hydraulic mining, 
which filled the bed of the stream after washing down 
the hills along the tributaries, is responsible. 

Sacramento, too, has seen marvelous changes. Those 
who pass along its beautiful streets find it difficult to 
realize that as late as 1861 the exceedingly dusty high- 
ways, with sidewalks of varying level, were bordered 
by a rather uninviting array of one- and two-story 
buildings. Even then, however, the bustling city of 
13,000 people quickly w^ove its spell over those who came 
to live there, by reason of its brilliant but soft autumnal 

200 



GREAT SALT LAKE TO SACRAMENTO 

sunshine, its equable climate, its wealth of shade trees 
and perfume-bearing flowers, its hospitable and unpre- 
tentious people and its easy-going ways. 

Late that autumn the city by the Sacramento, which 
had already suffered from an epidemic of fires, entered 
on a new series of misfortunes. Once rains began, they 
were frequent and copious, with snow soon visible on the 
peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, some fifty miles or so 
to the east. Presently came a thaw. On December 9 
the swollen American River — ^normally emptying at 
right angles into the Sacramento at the north edge of 
the city — broke through its dilapidated levees at a point 
some two miles east, and put the city under water so 
that only boats could use the streets. There was at 
once a great exodus. A succession of floods followed. 
The Sacramento valley was for months one vast lake. 
By June, 1862, the population of the city had dwindled 
to about 7000, and this reduced body of not rich people, 
with deflated business, had at once to tax itself half a 
million dollars extra for new levees, specially along the 
American River, where the piles of dirt came very handy 
in 1863 for Governor Leland Stanford and his associ- 
ates, Huntingdon, Hopkins and Goelet, serving them as 
a roadbed for the first section of the Central Pacific 
Railroad which they were then starting to build at much 
cost of hardship and a chorus of jeers and predictions 
of failure from the pessimistic masses of the disheart- 
ened people. 

''Stout-hearted little Sacramento!" wrote an ad- 
mirer in 1870, ''that was not dismayed by the wasting 
fires and the flood, that was not turned back from 
her large enterprise by the hootings and jeers of 
small souls." 



CHAPTER XXI 

FROM SAN DIEGO TO THE IMPERIAL VALLEY 

CALIFORNIA is the home of superb highways. 
From one end of the State to the other, and from 
the Pacific to the Sierras, marvels of the road 
builder's art lead through scenes of persistent and 
ever-varied appeal. Frequently a visitor is heard to 
say, with a sigh, at the close of a day of delightful 
progress through some fascinating succession of Cali- 
fornia kaleidoscopic landscape pictures, '* To-morrow 
can hold nothing better than this." Yet, at the close 
of the next day he is apt to own that California's motto, 
in scenery as in so many other things, is ''Better yet to 
come." And this is true whether the visitor starts his 
joumeyings in the north, about Mt. Shasta, on the west, 
at San Francisco, on the east, at Lake Tahoe, or in the 
far south, at San Diego. 

But wherever the beginning is made, San Diego 
must be seen before the state is left behind — San Diego, 
of the romantic antecedents ; San Diego, the Determined ; 
San Diego, the Conqueror of Obstacles. In spite of all 
the visitor has read of the attractions of the city set 
like a gem on the slope that looks down on its beautiful 
land-locked harbor, — to the left Coronado Beach and its 
great hotel ; in front Point Loma, with its ten-mile drive 
on the height between the Pacific and the bay — he is not 
disappointed. For San Diego is like a bit of fairyland 
— by night, when the lights are seen either from some 
commanding height, or from the dream-like central 
plaza ; by day, when the call is to the streets that give 

202 



SAN DIEGO TO THE IMPERIAL VALLEY 

a view of the poetic setting of this city of Eamona, or 
to fourteen-hundred-acre Balboa Park. Until a few 
years ago this park was a barren waste, but now it is 
a bower of beauty, with its startling landscape effects, 
its bridge spanning the gorge that is a fitting approach 
to the low-lying palaces, reminder of the Exposition, 
and its rose garden, which, even in a region re- 
nowned for its flowers, is a riot of harmony and 
color and perfume. 

But it is a mistake to think that when the city itself 
has been seen it is time to hasten on to Los Angeles 
and the north. For, while San Diego is absolutely worth 
while, San Diego's back-country is even more alluring 
than the city. Some visitors go away with the fond 
notion that they have seen this back-country when they 
have made their pilgrimage south to Tia Juana, over the 
Mexican border in Lower California, or have taken an 
hour 's ride on the boulevard-like roads to the west. And 
they have not made a beginning. 

The real back-country of San Diego has been opened 
up by the building of the Imperial Highway and con- 
necting roads, notably the road to the Lagunas, recently 
constructed with admirable skill under the auspices of 
the United States Forest Service, whose Cleveland 
National Forest is protecting the watersheds, securing 
ample water supply for hundreds of thousands of people 
as well as for the growers of fruits and grain, and 
providing recreation areas for all who live in the region 
from the Pacific to the Arizona line. 

The road to the Lagunas winds in and out of the hills, 
along the valleys and across the ridges, past Mt. Helix, 
with cross on summit, where sunrise services are held 
on Easter morning, and within sight of the slope over- 

203 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

looking the rich El Cajon valley. Then comes the Val- 
ley de las Viejas, with its abrupt hills on the left — a 
valley whose legend is told by an old Indian woman, 
for years helper in the kitchen at Hulburd Grove, the 
convenient half-way station for travelers to the La- 
gunas. In the days before the white man arrived, In- 
dians lived happily in the valley. But one day came the 
tidings that the Spaniards were advancing from the 
coast, and the warning that wherever these men ap- 
peared the Indians were treated cruelly. So at a 
solemn council it was decided that all the strong men 
and women should hide in the mountain, leaving behind 
only the old women and the men Avho were past fighting. 
''What if they do kill usT' said those thus marked for 
sacrifice. "We are useless; let us die." Thus when 
the Spaniards came they found no one whom they 
could fight; so they called the place *'the Valley of 
Old Women. '» 

If the story is true, some of those who fled from the 
strange visitors must have taken the picturesque trail 
over the Deerhom Mountains, by the Sweetwater Gorge, 
which is followed by the Imperial Highway. Then 
comes Descanso (Rest). Just beyond Descanso is Hul- 
burd Grove amid the live oaks, on the banks of 
the Sweetwater. 

From Hulburd Grove as a center the way is open 
either to the Laguna Mountains, a tract of natural forest 
about five or six miles wide by ten or twelve miles long, 
some sixty miles east of San Diego, at an elevation of 
from five thousand to six thousand feet, approached 
by a gradual and comparatively easy climb, or to the 
country of the Cuyamaea Mountains, farther north, a 
region not less beautiful but with striking differences. 

204 



SAN DIEGO TO THE IMPERIAL VALLEY 

"WTiile it is possible to make both trips in a single day, 
it is better to allow a longer time. 

The vegetation along the road to the Lagunas is 
varied. At first there is an abundance of live oak trees 
with their gnarled trunks, spreading branches and deep 
shade, but gradually these give way to the mountain 
deciduous oaks and to the pine trees. Thousands of 
these stately pines bear the marks of old blazes; the 
Indians have a tradition that many years ago white 
men came to the forest, tapped the trees and carried 
away the turpentine, at the same time making the ex- 
planation that far away there was a great war, and that 
the side that had the most white sap would win. This 
tradition dates back to the days of the war between the 
North and the South, when the North's natural supply 
of turpentine was cut off. 

Under the pines the ground is carpeted with the 
fragrant, slippery needles where campers delight to 
make their beds beneath the great trunks whose bark 
has been peppered by the industrious woodpecker in 
the search for insects, and into these holes the equally 
industrious and more provident squirrel snugly fits his 
acorns against the day of dire need when snow lies thick 
on the ground. 

Now the slopes are covered with the bright colored 
bronco grass ; again there are natural highland meadows 
where the cattle graze. And everywhere there are bril- 
liant flowers — the gigantic white matillaha poppy, the 
scarlet bugler, the Indian paintbrush, whose tint seems 
to become deeper as the altitude increases, the white 
lilac, the Alpine phlox, the wallflower, and the purple 
penstamen. As the season advances the wild growth 
changes, but always there is striking variety. 

205 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

"With one of the sudden changes of view for which 
the road to the Lagunas is remarkable, 'Pine Valley 
appears, an upland floor of emerald in a frame of brush- 
covered mountains. At the entrance to the valley are 
deep gorges cut in the floor during two seasons of the 
past twenty years, seasons of great forest fires, and so 
an object lesson of the destructive power of flood 
waters that were not restrained by the protecting 
brush covering. 

Along the rugged slopes above Pine Valley climbs 
the forest road, presenting vistas across the valley to 
the Cuyamacas, and back through mountain passes to 
the blue Pacific, sixty miles away. Then on through the 
forest where inviting camping grounds have been made 
available for the dwellers by the sea or for the denizens 
of the desert or the hot but fertile Imperial Valley; 
past the site of an old Indian village, where the rocks 
are full of pot holes, marks of the old campfires ; then 
to the Ranger Station where record is kept of the 
campers who seek this favored spot and where permits 
are given for the building of campfires to those who 
faithfully promise to be more careful than a man of 
whom the Service tells with finger upraised in warning : 

Tom Tourist always planned his fishing trips right 
carefully. When it came to having a good time, Tom 
was on the job. So he always got his National Forest 
maps, studied them carefully, and agreed fully with all 
the suggestions for care with fire in the mountains. 

He was an old-timer at the game, and knew what a 
fire in the timber would mean. He also knew that Uncle 
Sam needed the help of every American in Uncle 's big 
new job of helping half the world to get on its feet again 
after taking the Will out of Wilhelm. 

So Tom Tourist, for the first 200 miles, was so care- 

206 



SAN DIEGO TO THE IMPERIAL VALLEY 

ful that it hurt. Then a Ranger saw him flip a lighted 
cigarette alongside the road. Now Tom didn't mean 
any real hann, and the talk he got stayed with him until 
he was ready for the run home. 

*' Let's go," said Tom, early one morning. He 
packed the trout carefully — but he left without putting 
his campfire out. 

Five million feet of timber went up in smoke. Fred 
Farmer and his neighbors for ten miles around had 
to let their crops stand while they fought fire for 
two weeks. One thousand acres of God's country was 
ruined for years to come. 

Tom's friends now go elsewhere. Tom goes to jail. 

Not far from the station where vigilant Eangera 
have headquarters for the campaign of fire preven- 
tion and fire conquest, the road leads to the brink 
of a precipice where there opens with startling sud- 
denness a view that compels silence in the manifest 
presence of the world's Creator. Far below and be- 
yond is a vision that is like a prospect from an aero- 
plane — the arid desert, with its barren, broiling ridges ; 
the Imperial Valley, rich and green and fruitful; the 
Salton Sea, mystery of the sand-swept basin beneath 
the level of the sea ; and the mountains beyond, in Ari- 
zona, visible on a clear day. Where else is there a 
panorama to compare with this? Look at it through 
the setting nature has provided — on either hand ridges 
jutting from the height at the feet of the beholder, pine 
trees rising from the brink, their branches making sil- 
houettes against the blue sky, all parts of a frame that 
sets off Desert View as a place apart. 

A view still more extensive is that from the near-by 
summit of Monument Peak, 6321 feet high, or more 
than three hundred feet above Desert View. Here more 

207 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

of the upper desert is visible. Far below and away 
to the east wends the old San Felipe trail, with the 
ruined stage station in the pass, leading to the Salton 
Sea, and later to the Imperial Valley. A backward 
look shows the waters of the Pacific, seventy miles away. 
Then a forward turn, with Arizona beyond. Three hun- 
dred miles of mountain and valley and desert, visible 
on a clear day from one summit — ^the entire width of 
golden, blooming, desert-defying California! 

To the northwest Cuyamaca lifts its divided head — 
another of the summits that should be approached from 
the vicinity of Descanso. The road that leads to the 
mountain is bordered by live oaks, so that it seems more 
like an arbor than a mountain way. Up Green Valley 
it winds, through the old Spanish grant Cuyamaca, 
32,000 acres in extent, past the abandoned Stonewall 
gold mine, where fortunes have been gained and lost, 
to the borders of Cuyamaca Lake, the source of 
the water supply of some of the smaller towns near 
the coast. 

Here, where there is the smallest rainfall in all the 
region, Indian legends, in pleasing manner, give hint 
of the value the residents have always placed on water. 
They tell of a great ogre who once lived in Green Valley. 
He liked cold water, and he liked Indian maidens. No 
water he could find was cold enough for him, so he made 
a spring on Cuyamaca, which he called '' Ah-ha ! Wi-ah- 
ha!" (Water, Colder Water.) To this spring he sent 
his most beautiful Indian maiden captive, bidding her 
fetch water for him, and making threat of dire punish- 
ment if she should permit it to become brackish. But 
at the spring she prayed for release from bondage. The 
spirit of the spring engulfed her, and there she has 

208 




ON IHK li()A\> AUOVE CI. VAMACA LAKE. THE ARCHED TREE 
IS A SUGAR PINE 



SAN DIEGO TO THE IMPERIAL VALLEY 

dwelt in safety ever since, making the waters of the 
spring even cooler and more delicious. 

Another legend tells of trouble that came when the 
spring Water, Colder Water, betrothed herself to Water 
Sweet, the stream that flowed down the sides of Pine 
Tree Peak into Green Valley. The betrothal brought 
to a head jealousy among the peaks. For the mountain 
Ah-ha Kwe-ah-mao (Cuyamaca) felt superior to Pine 
Tree because he, together with another mountain, wore 
beautiful long hair of sweet-smelling pines and cedar 
trees, while the head of Pine Tree was covered with 
lilac, elm, and much scrub and brush — short hair that 
was a sign of servitude. So when Pine Tree said that 
he had always sheltered Water Sweet and that Cuya- 
maca 's Water, Colder Water, should not be betrothed to 
her, jealousy led to blows. There was an awful up- 
heaval. Finally Pine Tree, conquered, was compelled 
to take refuge in the midst of mountains with short- 
cropped hair, far from Green Valley, where dwelt 
Cuyamaca and his sister peaks. 

And for proof the Indians point triumphantly to 
the fact that Pine Tree (Corta Madera) now dwells 
apart, and to the further fact that while Cuyamaca 
has majestic covering of pine and cedar, Corta Madera 
hangs his head because there is nothing but brush to 
clothe his nakedness. 



14 



CHAPTER XXII 
IN AND ABOUT LOS ANGELES 

THOSE who are jealous of Los Angeles call her 
boastful and self-sufficient, but those who know 
best the City of the Angels say that back of 
every boast is a substantial fact, and that her record of 
achievements has given her some right to seem self- 
sufficient. Perhaps it would be fairer to call the city 
proud of things accomplished rather than boastful, and 
resourceful rather than self-sufficient. 

Not long ago a dinner was given by public-spirited 
citizens of Los Angeles to which all were invited who 
had been residents of the city since 1890! That late 
date seems absurd, until the appearance of the city 
only a generation ago is recalled. That was indeed a 
day of ambitious beginnings, of ardent hopes, of wild 
prophecies. But who in that day had faith to picture 
the Los Angeles of to-day, sitting serenely many miles 
from the water, yet reaching out tentacles to the Pacific 
until she has become a seaport; taking tribute from 
hosts of tourists, and giving more than value received 
to all her visitors ; rebuilding a second and a third and 
even a fourth time her business center until structures 
that seemed grand in 1890 to-day — wherever they sur- 
vive — seem almost grotesque; cutting down hills that 
hindered her growth ; developing vast areas of comfort- 
able homes embowered in bloom; compelling the far- 
away mountains to send to her, across the desert and the 
valleys, an inexhaustible supply of water ! Yet that is 
Los Angeles — only let it be remembered that there must 

210 



IN AND ABOUT LOS ANGELES 

be added brilliant sunshine as well as (though usually 
in a strictly limited and homoeopathic manner) an ex- 
ceedingly wet rainfall ; pleasure spaces even in the heart 
of the city, though the grounds of mansion and bunga- 
low alike seem to be trying to make parks unnecessary; 
houses where there are real homes, and folks who are 
homelike and hospitable; churches that can give 
pointers to the East in many things, even if many 
of the people seem to prefer pride in church buildings 
to attendance on the services ; school equipment that sets 
the pace for numerous other communities — as well as 
scores of other things that are named unblushingly by 
the Chamber of Commerce. And why not? 

One boast most emphatically made is of the fifteen- 
mile-long recreation area along the coast from Eedondo 
on the south to Santa Monica on the north, including 
far-famed Venice, whose buildings are supposed to lend 
a Mediterranean atmosphere to the scene, while lagoons 
and gondolas are planned for the pleasure of those who 
wish they could go to the smiling city by the Adriatic, 
or who desire to satisfy the craving for the Venetian 
atmosphere in which they revelled once upon a time. 
It is to be feared, however, that to those who know the 
real Venice the California borrower of the name is a 
hollow mockery, though it has enough charm of its own 
to make entirely unnecessary its claim to likeness to the 
only original city with its feet in the water. 

Between Los Angeles and the lower seaside resorts 
is an area usually passed over hurriedly by the visitor, 
perhaps because his attention has not been called to it 
as among the chief attractions of the city. This slighted, 
yet most interesting section, is a portion of the vast 
market-gardening acreage surrounding the city, or 

211 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

within the limits. There the Chinese toil with pains- 
taking perseverance, and the Japanese make their 
leased ground produce an abundant harvest, while the 
Mexicans — almost always lacking in initiative, purpose 
or patience — sometimes are found at work for their 
fellows from the Orient. 

There are those who say that they would not like 
to eat food prepared, or even grown, by a Chinese 
or Japanese laborer. But if their objection is due to 
the notion that these men are not cleanly in their habits, 
it would be worth while to spend a few hours in the 
shacks or in the fields of these market gardeners. 

For instance, one might eat dinner with the China- 
men who have just come from the field. It will be a 
meal far different from that served in a Chinese res- 
taurant, where tourists who partake of tea and con- 
fections fondly fancy that they are sampling Chinese 
cooking. After watching the laborers wash their hands 
with care, follow them to the table. It is covered with 
an oilcloth, but the oilcloth is clean. The floor is of 
dirt, but there is no litter about. The food has been 
cooked in great kettles over a most primitive stove, but 
neither kettle nor stove looks forbidding. 

The main dish on the table is, of course, rice. And 
such rice I How do they manage to cook a great kettle- 
full, ten times as much as would be used by an ordinary 
family, and in a comparatively short time, so that every 
grain stands out by itself, without one particle of mois- 
ture visible ? Each man in turn fills his individual bowl, 
one first, however, making the privilege of serving 
the guest. For the eight men at table there are two sets 
of four small subordinate dishes — delicious greens of a 
peculiar kind which the gardeners do not sell, but re- 

212 




KIASIAN- I'AKK, .\KAK THE IIEAK 




IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY, NEAR RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA. AN ORANGE 
GROVE IN SIGHT OF THE SNOW 



IN AND ABOUT LOS ANGELES 

serve for their own use ; peas and shredded pork ; bits 
of dried fish ; and what they call Chinese potato. From 
these dishes each takes a tidbit as he happens to want it, 
laying it in his bowl of rice, then taking it to his mouth 
with his chopsticks. The rice is eaten, not by lifting the 
grains by the chopsticks, but by holding the bowl to the 
mouth and, with the chopsticks, shoving their staff of 
life in a manner that to the observer seems the only 
natural method. From time to time the men turn 
to the guest and ask him if he will have more of the 
rice or the other dishes. When they are satisfied, the 
cook quickly clears the table, throws everything left 
over to the chickens, cleans the dishes in eminently 
orthodox fashion, and turns aside to share with his 
fellows the delights of the water pipe — though it is 
difficult to see what delight there can be in taking a 
smoke when each minute bit of tobacco, just enough 
for a single whiff, must be lighted repeatedly. 

"Me glad! You come tomoUow!" was the parting 
message of the master workman, who bowed low as 
the visitor passed on to the near-by home of a Japanese 
gardener who had outside his kitchen door a lean-to 
that looked like a smokehouse. There was a place for 
a fire under a stone hearth beneath the building's foun- 
dation, and the boards above it were charred by the 
smoke of months. The smiling Japanese wife opened 
the door, and disclosed nothing but a galvanized iron 
receptacle perhaps six times the size of a washtub. 
Then she explained that when her husband came home 
from the field in the evening it is his habit to light the 
fire under the absurd-looking tub, step into the vessel, 
turn on the hydrant, and wait there in luxury while 
the water slowly heated. Then he would remain an 

213 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

unbelievably long time while the water became bliss- 
fully hot. At last he would be ready for the sleep that 
would fit him for another day of toil. 

From the market-gardening section the way is easy 
to the beaches and then back toward the city, with the 
Santa Monica Mountains on the north, past numerous 
moving picture establishments, each with its silhouettes 
of buildings — mining camps, oriental villages, and the 
like. Though the rule of ''no admittance except on 
business'^ is rigidly enforced, it is possible to see the 
arrival and departure of would-be vampires, as well 
as of many hopeful young girls with hair dressed to 
imitate popular stars. 

Across the upper end of the city, at Hollywood, one 
of the cinema concerns has the advantage of the foothills 
at the back of the studio, and here innumerable rescues 
and searches for the lost in the wilderness have been 
staged. It is remarkable to see how limited a space 
is required for some of the long-continued chases of 
fleeing bandits or runaway lovers ! 

The boulevard that leads towards San Fernando has 
probably been chosen for the scene of numerous film 
dramas ; its double roadway, with roses thickly placed 
on both sides of each section, provides a setting on which 
more than one searcher for locations has fixed his eyes. 

Beyond lies San Fernando, one of the most pic- 
turesque of the old missions built along El Camino Real. 
What an eye to grandeur of setting those Spanish mis- 
sion builders had ! San Fernando is in an amphitheatre, 
whose bounds are fixed by the Santa Monica Mountains, 
the Simi Hills, the Santa Susana Mountains, and the 
Verdugo Hills — slopes now green, now brown, but 
always protecting to the mission in the fertile valley. 

214 



IN AND ABOUT LOS ANGELES 

Fortunately for the pleasure of the visitor of to-day, 
practically nothing has yet been done to restore the 
crumbling walls of one of the two main buildings, though 
a modern chapel has been placed in the buildings by the 
roadside whose cloisters, still intact, are beautiful in 
their simplicity. The chapel is just above the great wine 
cellar, massive to-day as it was more than a century 
ago. Most of the old missions have been restored, and 
it is to be hoped that San Fernando will be cared for 
before it is too late. But let the work be done with 
sympathetic insight and with thoroughgoing restraint. 

Between San Fernando and Pasadena there is a bit 
of desert land where the cactus thrives and where 
machine owners from the city like to stop and hack 
down gigantic stalks of yucca, returning home with the 
upright floral banner marking the car a square away 
in the city streets. 

Then comes Arroyo Seco, crossed, at Pasadena the 
Marvelous, by the graceful double concrete viaduct; 
and, ten miles back in the San Gabriel Mountains, bor- 
dered by several hundred summer home sites leased by 
the Government for fifteen dollars each per year, as well 
as by vacation areas and playgrounds set apart as a bit 
of the service rendered by the Angeles Forest to the 
city dwellers who turn to these mountains for an outing. 

And what chances these mountains aif ord for recrea- 
tion! Eoads and trails, camp and canyon, peaks and 
valleys, are on all sides ; at every turn there are alluring 
nooks that offer help to men and women to put in a 
health-giving vacation. And the one request made of 
those who seek this area is that they will do their part 
to prevent the fires which would destroy the brush that 
covers the mountainside and so would hinder the con- 

215 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

servation of water for the fruits and grain of the val- 
leys. Eesidents of the valleys are so eager to cooperate 
with the Forest Service that counties, towns, and even 
individuals, volunteer to add to the funds available for 
furnishing fire patrols and fire fighters. 

There is no better way to see the rich country tribu- 
tary to Los Angeles, where the growers cooperate with 
workers of the Angeles Forest and of the Cleveland 
Forest, than to go by stage to Santa Ana, along avenues 
of pepper trees, by groves of oranges and lemons, of 
olives and English walnuts. 

The Cleveland Forest lies to the east of Santa Ana, 
in the Santa Ana Mountains, and its lower edge is 
pierced by the Santiago Canyon road, among the live 
oaks and sycamores. These trees are at their best at 
the Orange County Park of 160 acres, a free resort 
for campers, where tourists stop in numbers when on 
the way from San Diego to the north. 

For ten miles more the canyon leads on, with sur- 
prise at every turn. Numerous side canyons give their 
invitation to explore the secret places found by cattle 
rustlers of the early days. Up one of these side canyons 
is the garden and the redwood Forest of Arden, home 
of Madame Modjeska, where she lived with her husband 
during weeks of respite from the clamors of the crowd. 
The house is now a popular resort, and so may be seen 
easily ; it is much the same as in the days of its builder, 
even to the red window in the Madame 's bedroom, 
through which — so the story runs — the great trage- 
dienne delighted to rest herself by looking at the woods 
which seemed to be on fire; though unfortunately for 
tradition, her son says that he secured that window 
for purposes of photography. 

216 



IN AND ABOUT LOS ANGELES 

A few miles north of Santa Ana, near Placentia, is 
a more curious combination than a red glass window 
and a tragedienne — citrus groves and flourishing oil 
fields. In one large field producing wells are in the 
midst of trees that bear their luscious fruit. 

From Placentia the way is easy to Corona and then, 
by the justly famous Magnolia Drive, to Riverside, 
where Mount Rubidoux, dedicated to Easter morn- 
ing services, divides attention with the groves of the 
navel orange. 

Redlands and San Bernardino are close to River- 
side, and just beyond San Bernardino are the desert 
lands. But to the west is the Cucamonga Valley, whose 
proud slope to the San Gabriels adds to its beauty. 
This is the beginning of the fifty-mile backward stretch 
toward Los Angeles which completes the circuit of the 
famous fruit belt tributary to the City of the Angels. 



CHAPTER XXm 
IN THE HEART OF THE SIERRAS 

CClp AY a velvet carpet across the Sierras ! The Em- 



E 



peror is coming ! ' ' 



The dismayed mountain guide read the mes- 
sage from a friend in San Francisco who would warn 
him what to expect when the magnate who traveled in 
his private car reached the mountains. And he sighed. 

"But I am afraid I would have done more than sigh 
if I had been able to forecast the three tragic weeks that 
followed, ' ' he said. * ' Think of a man who declared that 
he would not stir a step into the mountains unless his 
hair mattress, double thickness, was carried along! I 
ought to have put my foot down hard, but in a moment 
of weakness I had the mattress draped over a burro's 
back. Poor beastie ! He couldn't even flirt his tail; he 
was a ludicrous sight as he passed along the steep trail, 
only his long ears showing above the mattress. 

"And the wife! She wore silk stockings and high- 
heeled shoes when she mounted her horse the first day 
of the trip. And she said to one of the guides, 'You 
stay by me, my man, for I may want to get off at any 
moment. ' And he replied, with a firmness I envied him, 
'I'm going to Horse Corral Meadows, ma'am, and if 
you want to go, too, you just stick on that horse.' " 

Once her poor guide, unable longer to stand the 
strain, sat down on a rock and wept. ' ' The spectacle of 
a hard-boiled egg of a mountaineer crying like a baby 
was too much for the rest of us," the leader of the party 
said. "We did our best to comfort him, and in a little 
while he consented to make another attempt to conduct 

218 



IN THE HEART OF THE SIERRAS 

the awful vacation-seekers over the torturing trail." 

When the tale of the three tragic weeks was con- 
cluded, the guide talked of men who had entered the 
Sierras with other ideas than to have a camping trip 
de luxe. ' ' John Muir and Joseph Le Conte — they were 
real men!" he declared. ^'No nonsense about them I 
How Professor Le Conte loved the Sierras ! And how 
wonderfully John Muir talked of the meadows and the 
peaks, the canyons and the waterfalls ! His eveiy refer- 
ence to the trees was a caress. It was great to camp 
with him!" 

That guide himself must have caught the spirit of 
these men of the Sierras, to judge from his tale of a 
camping trip when he spent weeks alone. 

' ' Yet I was not alone, ' ' he said. ' ' I had some good 
companions on that trip. The most remarkable were 
six Clark crows which stayed with me for days. I was 
late that year ; it was long past the middle of November 
before I finally heeded the signs of coming winter. 
Those six crows seemed to realize that I was going soon ; 
they looked at me mournfully, they talked to me per- 
sistently, they robbed me unmercifully. Always they 
greeted me in the morning from a dead branch near 
my camp-fire, and in the evening they were at hand with 
their strident welcome. I'll never forget the day I 
left them. When I broke camp they remonstrated, and 
when I started with my pack horse down the trail they 
followed me reproachfully. The last thing I saw as I 
passed around a rock near by was that dead branch 
with the six Clark crows, perched side by side, looking 
after me so seriously, as if they would say, 'We didn't 
think you would leave old friends like this !' " 

Fresno, in the San Joaquin Valley, is the favorite 

219 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

gateway to the Sierras for this guide, though Merced 
and Visalia likewise are portals to the mountain fast- 
nesses. But Fresno is a particularly good place for the 
start, since it has so many attractions of its own. Its 
raisin vineyards are famous, and its Kearney Park, 
with the twelve-mile approach, bordered by palms and 
pepper trees and magnolias, is a marvel. The park is the 
central feature of the great Kearney estate, where the 
bachelor man of mystery who owned it had a house 
containing many guest rooms, though he never enter- 
tained a guest. During his lifetime he did not show a 
particle of interest in educational institutions, but by 
his will the four thousand acres passed to the University 
of California as an Experimental Eeserve Farm. Every 
year thousands of visitors pass through the gateway, 
their approach made easy not merely by the railroads, 
but by the remarkable State Highway from San Fran- 
cisco to Los Angeles. 

The day is not far distant when the roads that 
radiate from Fresno to different portions of the Sierras 
will be almost as perfect as the main north and south 
highway. In the meantime they are far better than 
the average, and the trip, whether made by stage or by 
private car, is remarkably easy. 

Five or six hours away, to the southeast, is Sequoia 
National Park, whose two hundred and fifty-two square 
miles contain more than one million Sequoia trees, of 
which more than twelve -thousand exceed ten feet in 
diameter. The monarch of all is the General Sherman 
Tree, said to be the oldest living thing, whose diameter 
is more than thirty-six feet. 

From Fresno to the park the way is among vine- 
yards and orange groves, to the shadowing foothills, 



IN THE HEART OF THE SIERRAS 

and then to the mountain heights — for the Sequoia 
Gig ant ea demands an altitude of from five to six thou- 
sand feet. It is not necessary to regret that these 
glorious trees cannot be climbed; a view of the sur- 
rounding country can be gained from Moro Rock and 
Sensation Point. From Moro Rock can be seen the 
structure of the Sierras, from the foothills to the high- 
est summits. The United States Government has built 
a stairway to the top of this observatory of the moun- 
tains. From the bald summit of the glaciated rock 
there are spread out the Kaweahs, most spectacular of 
the Sierras. Far to the east numerous snowy peaks 
lift their heads, with majestic Mount Whitney, the king 
of them all, while to the north are more big groves of big 
trees, innumerable canyons, and peaks that make clar- 
ion call to those regions which most visitors pass by 
for the Yosemite, still farther north, though these are 
not less worthy of delighted attention than the world- 
renowned wonders of the upper Merced. 

From Fresno once more is the chief approach to the 
Big Tree Country to the north of Sequoia Park. The 
road climbs rapidly as soon as the San Joaquin Valley 
is left behind. Fresno is only about one hundred feet 
above the sea, but General Grant Park, seventy miles 
distant, is about sixty-seven hundred feet high. 

The passage through the foothills has its grim re- 
minders of the days when Sontag and Evans, the mail 
robbers, the terror of Southern Pacific officials, eluded 
sheriff's posses innumerable. More picturesque are the 
tales of the Basque shepherds whose great flocks feed 
in the forests and along the canyons. 

The final ascent to General Grant Park is by a pre- 
carious road along the edge of a deep canyon where pine 

221 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

trees line tlie walls and brilliant flowers contest with the 
trees the claim to the attention of the passer-by. 

In the park itself there are not so many specimens 
of the Sequoia Gigantea as in Sequoia Park, but the 
pleasing grouping of the great trees, and the presence 
here of the General Grant tree — which is practically 
as large as the General Sherman tree in Sequoia 
Park — make it a resort whose popularity is increasing 
each year. 

The General Grant Park is a good starting point for 
the trip by pack horse to the great King's River Can- 
yon, the first of the four great canyons of the mid- 
Sierras that present so many striking similarities. The 
canyons farther north are the San Joaquin, the Merced 
and the Tuolumne. To the two last named more atten- 
tion has been paid than to the others, but King's Can- 
yon and San Joaquin Canyon are in many respects as 
striking as the more northerly neighbors. The forma- 
tions of King's River Canyon are remarkably like those 
of Yosemite, the canyon of the Merced, showing that 
the ways of erosion, glacial action and disintegration 
are similar along all the great water courses of these 
High Sierras. Those who persevere along King's River 
Canyon will come to the Kern River Canyon, the only 
one of the great gorges of the Sierra Nevada Moun- 
tains that stretches from north to south. 

Fresno is the starting point for another of these 
canyons, that of the San Joaquin, and Huntington Lake, 
seventy miles away — the artificial lake seven thousand 
feet high which supplies Los Angeles with electric 
power — is the terminus of the road that leads almost 
due east. All but four miles of the distance may be 
made by the picturesquely crooked San Joaquin and 
Eastern Railroad, in whose first twenty-five miles from 

222 




IKESiNO, CALIFORNIA 




MORO ROCK, SEQUOIA NATIONAL. PARK, CAMFOHM 



IN THE HEART OF THE SIERRAS 

Auberiy there seems to be no stretch longer than three 
hundred yards without a curve. And such curves ! To 
follow them in a comfortable railroad coach is an ex- 
perience to be remembered, but far better is it to ride up 
the mountain stretch on a gasoline-driven speeder. The 
churning blue waters of the San Joaquin are from one 
thousand to fifteen hundred feet below, now lost in the 
pine trees, again coming into enticing view. At length 
the stream disappears in a box canyon, impassable for 
twenty miles. Far beyond the canyon shows Balloon 
Dome Summit, the snow-clad Minarets, thirteen thou- 
sand feet high, and Mount Lyell — peaks that mark 
the divide between the basin of the San Joaquin and 
that of the Merced. 

The great power-station, from which wires lead to 
Los Angeles, is at the head of Big Creek Canyon, where 
Pitman Falls tumbles from shelf to shelf a thousand 
feet down the mountain. Four miles farther up — and 
two thousand feet higher — comfortable Huntington 
Lakes Lodge invites the fisherman, tbe boatman and 
the lover of the trail. 

From the canyon where engineers have created the 
reservoir that looks like a natural mountain lake, the 
Indians used to make their way every year to Mono 
Pass, in quest of pine nuts. Still some of them go 
that way, though most of those who drive their pack 
horses over the Mono Trail are mountaineers by pro- 
fession or are responding to the lure of the High 
Sierras. The trail has long been a standard means of ac- 
cess to the John Muir Trail, whose builders are making 
rapid progress — considering the shortness of the sum- 
mer season — toward the completion of this tribute to 
the great mountain lover whose name it bears. * ' Wben 
the final work is done, perhaps six or seven years from 

223 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

now, it will be possible for a man to pack his way 
from end to end and in twenty-eight days," said a 
guide familiar with the mountains. Then he said that 
the ^rst time he took that trail he was on the way five 
months and a half ! 

It is not necessary to return to the valley before 
passing from the Huntington Lake region to the two 
remaining canyons of John Muir's favorite stamping- 
ground — Yosemite and the Hetch Hetchy. Not many 
miles below the exit of the San Joaquin from its inacces- 
sible box canyon, there is a road that crosses the river 
on its way to North Fork, the headquarters of the 
Sierra National Forest, which includes most of the coun- 
try to the crest of the Sierras. Above North Fork, and 
beyond the hill country where bandits many times held 
up the stage that, in more primitive days, carried pil- 
grims bound for the Yosemite, lies the Mariposa Grove 
of Big Trees, perhaps the best known of all the Sequoia 
groves, by reason of its nearness to the Yosemite val- 
ley. There are many who declare that these are the 
finest as well as the best known of the trees, though 
there is difference of opinion on this point among those 
who know and love the Sierras. Yet there can be no 
difference of opinion as to the overwhelming charm of 
the prospect from Wawona Point, the height above the 
grove. On one side, across the valley, are the lower 
slopes of the mountains. To the right rises the tree- 
clad ridge of granite beyond which is the Yosemite. 
And in the rear the eyes are gladdened by the sight 
of the upper side of the great mountains seen from the 
railroad below Cascada, above the box canyon of the 
San Joaquin. 

Down from Wawona Point into the valley leads the 
road to Yosemite. Then up again from the valley to a 

224 



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ON THE WAY TO ILLxNTmUDOxN ]>AKE 




FOREST FIRE OF 1918 FROM WAWONA POINT 




MIRROR LAKE, YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, IN TENAYA CANYON 



IN THE HEART OF THE SIERRAS 

height of more than five thousand feet. Suddenly there 
bursts on the eyes a vision which cannot be described 
with any hope of telling its glory — the vision from 
Inspiration Point, where the Indians, who long reveled 
in the delights of the Yosemite, stood and worshiped ; 
where the settlers from the San Joaquin valley, in pur- 
suit of Indian raiders, paused in silent wonder. And 
those who follow in the steps of those first white visi- 
tors to the valley must imitate their silence as they 
pause at the gateway of what Emerson called "the 
only spot that I have ever found that came up to the 
brag." Involuntarily voices are hushed, and the best 
in the beholder comes close to the surface. "You sim- 
ply can't lie or say things in a place like that," was a 
mountaineer's way of expressing his feelings. 

At first the eye refuses to distinguish the features 
of the valley spread out like dreamland far beneath 
him. But as the moments pass he recognizes El Capi- 
tan, the gigantic wall of granite of which the Indians 
told one of their marvel tales — the sudden rising of the 
cliff from the side of the Merced, bearing aloft two 
sleeping Indian boys who, when men and animals alike 
failed in attempts at rescue, were finally brought to 
earth by the insignificant measuring worm, humping 
himself up the precipice to the accompaniment of jeers 
and jibes, and bumping himself down once more, amid 
the tumultuous acclaim of all. 

On the right, across the valley, the waters of Bridal 
Veil Falls slip down by the side of Cathedral Rocks. 
Beneath are the pines and the meadows. Beyond the 
valley's recesses urge speedy descent from the heights, 
along by the meadows in the great amphitheatre where 
Yosemite Village sits, with leaping, laughing, wind- 
driven Yosemite Falls on one side and the cliffs that 

15 225 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

lead to Glacier Point on the other. All along the way 
the waters of the Merced plunge along their narrow 
bed, fed by the streams from the heights that come down 
in Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls and the other cascades 
to which, fortunately, it is possible to approach until the 
spray becomes like a welcome shower-bath. 

Then comes the division in the canyon. From the 
right, the river descends rapidly along the Little 
Yosemite Canyon; to the left is the Tenaya Canyon, 
in its bosom Mirror Lake, whose waters are a poem in 
reflection. On three sides are the towering precipices. 
Wlien the rising sun has not yet shown itself above the 
cliffs on the east, every detail of rock and tree and 
shrub is shown clearly in the depths of the lake, until 
it is difficult to tell which is the more glorious, the view 
above, or the view beneath. The details are sharp, dis- 
tinct. The rocky islands with their growth of green, 
and the tree-lined shores cast shadows of lighter green 
that contrast delightfully with the darker green of 
the shadows of the pines. To the left Mt. Watkins' 
sloping sides are cut into the water like a cameo, while 
on the right another precipice gives a complementary 
reflection. And in the gap between a single great pine 
tree stands like a sentinel. Mirror Lake is a fit guardian 
of this side canyon that leads from the glacier-formed 
valley of the Yosemite. 

It is good to be in these sun-kissed canyons for a 
few days, but how much better it is to be there for a 
week, a month, a season! In 1871 John Muir wrote: 
''I did not go for a Saturday or a Sunday, or a stingy 
week, but with unmeasured time, and independent of 
companion or scientific association." And that is the 
way to see Yosemite, or Hetch Hetchy, its wild and 
comparatively unknown counterpart in the north. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

FROM LOS ANGELES TO SAN FRANCISCO 

IT is possible to go from Los Angeles to San Fran- 
cisco by two routes, whether the traveler uses the 
railroad or the automobile. The San Joaquin Val- 
ley route is fine, Ijut the route along and near the Pacific 
Ocean is finer still. 

As far as Santa Barbara the highway follows the 
route of the romantic old El C amino Real, the King's 
Highway or the Royal Road, first built as a means of 
communication between the Spanish missions founded 
by Junipero Serra, which were placed about twenty-five 
miles, or a day's journey, apart. 

The road first reaches the coast at Ventura, the site 
of the San Buenaventura Mission, remarkable for its 
Moorish tower, its adobe walls six feet thick, and its 
great roof timbers that w^ere brought from the moun- 
tains fifty miles away. 

Directly south of Ventura the eye looks off to the 
Channel Islands, where Cabrillo, California's first visi- 
tor from Europe, landed in 1542. Before his death on 
San Miguel Island he anchored in the beautiful half- 
moon harbor of Avalon, Catalina Island, famous to-day 
for its sea-gardens and its glass-bottomed boats, as well 
as because it is the approach to California's isle of 
perpetual summer, where the climate is nearly perfect. 
Once gold-seekers sought to overrun the 55,000 acres 
of the island. Later United States troops occupied it, 
but now it is valuable only as a resort for the fisherman, 
the hunter and the pleasure-seeker. 

227 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

It is impossible to forget the ride along Santa Bar- 
bara Channel, looking ont toward the islands. On one 
side are the monntains; on the other are the rngged 
eliffs, which stop the impetuous rush of the Pacitic 
waves, and make landing difficult. 

If Santa Barbara is approached from the monntains 
the scene is equally impressive. The road across the 
Santa Inez Llonntains is difficult, but difficulty is lost 
sight of when from the summit the foothills with the 
Mission two miles from the ocean, and the valley in 
which the city is built, compel the admiration of the 
beholder. The broad streets, the luxuriant trees, the 
Avelcoming parks and the beautiful homes of Santa Bar- 
bara plead with him to come down and abide there. 

And the people of Santa Barbara know how to wel- 
come the visitor. The romantic days of the Spaniards 
are not yet so far away that the traditions of easy- 
going hospitality have been forgotten. Charles Howard 
Shinn tells delightfully of the days when there was not 
a hotel in California, when it was considered a grievous 
offence even for a stranger, much more for a friend, 
to pass by a ranch without stopping. Fresh horses 
were always furnished, and in many ciises on record 
when strangers appeared to need financial help a pile 
of uncounted silver was left in the sleeping apartment, 
and guests were given to understand that they were 
to take all they needed. 

A forest lover, on tour with his family, found a sur- 
vival of this pleasing hospitality when he attempted to 
camp on vacant ground not far from a ranch home. 
*' Father wants to see you," a young man said to the 
campers while they were pitching their tent. Sur- 
prised, they sought the father, who greeted them with 




TMK fISSM |,^^.r^, HAN'TA < l.\H\ ((>< StY, ( ,\\.IK>HSI\ 



FROM LOS ANGELES TO SAN FRANCISCO 

shaking head and welcoming hand. "Why did you 
go past the ranch T ' he asked. * ' We have beds, we have 
food, we have a place for your beasts. Come down to 
the house at once. We want you. ' ' 

In 1829 a young American, traveling in company 
with Spaniards from Los Angeles, was given some fruit 
by the way. He offered two reals to the woman who 
gave it. In surprise she let the silver drop to the floor. 
Her husband fell on his knees and pleaded, "Give us 
no money, no money at all; everything is free in a 
gentleman's house.'* 

Further reminder of this cordial spirit was given 
by the Supervisor of the Monterey National Forest 
when he sent out his annual official invitation to the 
vacation-seeker : 

You have no doubt begun to make plans for your 
summer vacation. Have you ever considered the Mon- 
terey National Forest as the place for it? 

This Forest, situated in the rugged part of the Coast 
Range, between Monterey and San Luis Obispo, offers 
attractions of both ocean and mountain. 

There are three summer resorts within or near the 
Forest: Pfeiffer's ranch resort on the Coast Road near 
the mouth of Big Sur River, 35 miles south of Monterey 
by stage, Tassajara Hot Springs, the waters of which 
are famous for medicinal qualities, 50 miles by auto 
stage from Salinas, and the Arroyo Seco resort, 15 
miles by road from Soledad. All of these places are 
in the midst of a country abounding in game and in 
trout streams, stocked by the Monterey County Super- 
visors and the Forest Service. 

If, instead of automobiling, you prefer to leave the 
roads and travel through country accessible only by 
trail, you may find trails that have just been completed, 
opening up new areas for exploration. You can reach 

229 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

camping places in the upper San Antonio and Naci- 
miento Creeks and the upper Arroyo Seco by way of 
King City if you come from the north, or by way of 
Bradley and Jolon if you come from the south. 

You can reach the lower Arroyo Seco from Soledad 
or King City, and the upper Carmel Kiver, the Big Sur 
River, and the other streams of the Monterey Coast 
from Salinas or Monterey. This country is famous 
for its hunting and fishing, its rugged scenery and its 
marine landscapes. 

To reach these places you can start either with horse 
and pack or on foot, or travel by auto to the end of the 
road and there make arrangement to have some one pack 
for you. Several ranchers will do packing for campers. 

Detailed information will be gladly furnished upon 
request. 

Monterey likewise speaks restfuUy of the old Span- 
ish life. There is Mission San Carlos, where, according 
to legend, Junipero Serra was buried behind the altar 
rail. Relatives from Spain by bribery managed to 
secure the body and to carry it home with them, leaving 
behind the body of a criminal, wrapped in the vest- 
ments of the great Father of the Missions. There are 
the languorous streets of the old town and slumber- 
inviting houses by the way. And there is the famous 
Seventeen-mile drive to Cypress Point, among the sand 
dunes, along the rocky shores above the breaking waves, 
past the famous cypresses, in exposed places tortured by 
the wind into all sorts of fantastic shapes, and in more 
sheltered spots standing erect and normal. 

As startling in their way as the twisted cypresses 
of Monterey are the Pinnacles of the San Benito River 
Valley, twelve miles from the highway at Soledad. 
Here six square miles have been set apart as a National 
Monument. Some of the rocks are comparatively small, 

230 




CORMORANT ROdvS NKAK MONTl'.KF.V, CAl.IFdHNIA 




NATURAL BRIDGE ON THE COAST AT SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA 



FROM LOS ANGELES TO SAN FRANCISCO 

while others are from six hundred to one thousand feet 
high. No one may climb them, but all may stand below 
among the great boulders and marvel at the record 
of the day ages ago when a new course was made for the 
San Benito River towards Monterey Bay. 

Santa Cniz contests with Monterey and Soledad the 
claim to the possession of the most remarkable natural 
features in the country on and near the coast. Santa 
Cruz has rugged cliffs on the ocean shores and natural 
caves where the waters boil and foam in contests re- 
newed twice daily, while near at hand is the grove of 
Sequoia Sempervirens, where great trees, the largest of 
these fifty feet in circumference, rise in majesty on a 
slope that reaches down to the bank of a stream that 
seems lost amid such grandeur. And to the northeast 
there is the great cleft in the mountains cut by the Los 
Gates River, where the branch road twists and turns 
along the precipice in its descent toward the city. 

Along the road from Monterey to San Francisco 
still other mai'vels arrest the eye, in the fertile Pajaro 
Valley, where immigrants from Dalmatia succeed in 
growing some of America's finest apples, and in the 
Santa Clara Valley, farther north, the home of the 
vineyard, the apricot and the prune. The latter valley 
is dominated by Santa Clara and San Jose, cities con- 
nected by the Alameda drive, shaded by trees planted by 
the Mission Fathers when Spanish rule was in its glory. 
Access to Mount Hamilton, with its great Lick Observa- 
tory, is gained by w^ay of the Alum Rock drive and the 
connecting road, twenty-five miles to the summit. Le- 
land Stanford University, with its quaint quadrangle of 
mission architecture, is within easy reach to the north of 
San Jose. Its generous campus joins eight thousand 

231 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

acres of valley and hill, once the Stanford home vine- 
yards but now a part of the school's endowment. 

Stanford University is near the southern extremity 
of San Francisco Bay, called on a map of 1835 the Bay 
of Sir Francis Drake. A few miles northeast, at Berk- 
eley, is the older University of California, which, unlike 
Stanford, had a long period of struggle before it 
reached its present proud position. In 1853, as the 
College of California, it began in Oakland with an 
attendance of three. Twenty years later, it was re- 
moved to the beautiful site at Berkeley, which Joseph 
Le Conte said was one of the most beautiful sites in 
the world. ''Behind it the Berkeley hills, with their 
softly rounded forms, mantled with green, rise to a 
height of over two thousand feet within the distance of a 
mile," he wrote, in his pride of the institution to which 
he gave his best years; ''in front the ground slopes 
gently to the noble San Francisco Bay, with its bold 
islands ; and beyond the bay are the picturesque Santa 
Cruz and Tamalpais ranges, 3000 feet high, broken by 
the narrow strait called Golden Gate, through which, 
from the University, one can look out on the limit- 
less Pacific." 

What a time the prophets of those early days would 
have if they could look on the cities seated on San 
Francisco Bay! There were those who said that the 
removal to Berkeley would be fatal to the University. 
Others declared that Oakland would never be more than 
"the rural suburb and school-house of San Francisco," 
while they were ready to concede that San Francisco 
would be the great city it has become. One man de- 
clared in 1868 that the city by the Golden Gate would 
be not merely the metropolis of the western part of the 

232 



FROM LOS ANGELES TO SAN FRANCISCO 

United States, as New York is the metropolis of the 
eastern part, but the city, the sole great city. As if this 
were not enough, the prophet concluded by a question : 
*'Is it too much to say that this city must become the 
first city of the continent ; and is it too much to say that 
the first city of the continent must ultimately be the 
first city of the world?" 

The residents were surely right in speaking of San 
Francisco's matchless location as a great asset. But 
it required a man from the East — Samuel Bowles of the 
Springfield Republican — to give what is perhaps the 
best short description of the city ever written : 

San Francisco hangs over the edge of its (Califor- 
nia's) chief est bay, like the oriole balancing on the crest 
of its long pocket nest, peeping around the comer to 
the Pacific, but opening wide eyes north and south and 
east to the interior. 

San Francisco commanded admiration in the days 
of gold, but how much greater must that admiration 
be to-day when the chapter of her triumphs is recorded 
— the conquest of hills that are almost precipices by a 
means of transit invented for the purpose ; the turning 
of shifting sand dunes into sites for homes and beautiful 
Golden Gate Park; the tunneling of Lone Mountain, 
long thought to be an impassable barrier to broad 
Market Street ; the reconstruction of the city after the 
cataclysm of 1906, the most notable example in history 
of a city rising from its ashes. 

The city by the Golden Gate is rich in recreation 
spots. The ocean calls, and the voice of the mountains 
is heard. But perhaps the most appealing of the resorts 
is Muir Woods National Monument, near the base of 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Mt. Tamalpais, the only grove of redwoods within easy 
reach of the city. Visitors to this wilderness of huge 
trees, of fern and flower and shrub, will have pleasure 
increased if they keep in mind the reply made by 
the donor, William Kent, of Chicago, to the pro- 
posal of Theodore Roosevelt that the gift be called 
Kent Monument : 

Your kind suggestion of a change of name is not 
one that I can accept. So many millions of better 
people have died forgotten that to stencil one's o^ti 
name on a benefaction seems to carry with it an im- 
plication of mundane immortality, as being some- 
thing purchasable. 

I have five good, husky boys that I am trying to 
bring up to a knowledge of democracy and to a realiz- 
ing sense of the rights of the ''other fellow, *' doctrines 
which you, sir, have taught with more vigor and effect 
than any man in my time. If these boys cannot 
keep the name of Kent alive, I am willing it should 
be forgotten. 



CHAPTER XXV 

IN THE MOUNT SHASTA COUNTRY 

ON February 14, 1827, Peter Skene Ogden, Hud- 
son Bay fur trader, found himself in the Shasta 
country. That evening he penned a delightfully 
discursive entry in his diary: 

Wind blew a gale. If the ship destined for the 
Columbia be on the coast this stormy weather I should 
feel anxious for her. Having 40 beaver to skin and 
dress, I did not raise camp. . . . I have named this 
river Sastise River. There is a mountain equal in 
height to Mt. Hood or Vancouver. I have named it 
Mt. Sastise. I have given these names for the tribe 
of Indians. 

Sastise has become Shasta, but there has been no 
change in the admiration inspired by the mountain. 
Rising abruptly and alone, to a height of more than 
fourteen thousand feet, from a plain little more than 
three thousand feet above the sea, it impresses itself on 
the beholder as do few American peaks. And it is 
so close to the railroad that tens of thousands become 
acquainted with the startling sweep of its sides, the 
sharp line between the trees and the snow, and the bald 
summit, so often lost in the clouds that crown its head. 
Lassen Peak, seventy-five miles to the southeast, has 
won fame because it has had the temerity to become 
an active volcano. But Shasta, always the same, 
proudly asserts its lordship over plains and mountains 
in Northern California. 

235 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

The best way to know Shasta is to climb to its sum- 
mit, as many do each year. However, no one needs 
to be discouraged if strength or time for the climb are 
lacking. For the country about the mountains is acces- 
sible both by country roads and by the roads and trails 
of the Shasta Forest which wend their way amid grazing 
stock and browsing deer, through pineland and meadow 
and — alas ! — through areas blackened by forest fires. 

For the visitor who is ready to guard against fire, 
there is a pleasing entrance to the forest area not far 
from the Castle Crags, near the Southern Pacific Eail- 
way station of that name, by way of the Castle Crags 
and McCloud Eiver toll-road. This road leads up Soda 
Creek Canyon, amid the swaying trunks of red firs, 
which somehow seem a bit more companionable than the 
great Sequoias. Perhaps a deer will leap from the 
roadside ahead, as on the day the author made the trip. 
A doe with her two spotted fawns turned startled eyes 
on thei machine and its occupants. The doe and one 
fawn succeeded in escaping, but the other fawn lay 
down in the road directly before the wheels. The skill- 
ful driver avoided her and the animal was gently lifted 
into the underbrush and there left to be discovered by 
the anxious doe, which would probably lose no time in 
removing the hated man smell from her little one. 

Not all animals in the Shasta area are as appealing 
and as harmless as the deer. Every year official hunters 
seek the mountain lions, which prey on the sheep and 
cattle that find pasture in the forests. One of these 
men, a year or two ago, succeeded in killing five lions 
in a single day. A curious Ranger who asked him to 
tell of his narrowest escape heard from him a start- 
ling story: 

236 



IN THE MOUNT SHASTA COUNTRY 

One winter morning when my wife had gone from 
home, taking the dog with her, I found the trail of 
two mountain lions. After pinning to the door a 
note asking her to send the dog after me as soon as 
she returned, I took my gun and started on the trail. 
There was no sign of the beasts until I slipped on the 
edge of a sloping ledge of rock. I arrived at the bottom 
safely, but found myself within a few rods of both lions. 
The trigger was pulled. There was no response. Again 
I tried to fire, but once more without result. The gun 
was empty! And I had no shells with me. At this 
ticklish moment, when one lion w^as about to spring, 
there was a rustle in the bushes that attracted the atten- 
tion of the crouching beast. It was my dog, and about 
his neck was tied a handkerchief, in which were the 
missing shells. Latei^ I learned that my wife had 
removed them for fear our little boy would get hold of 
the gun, had forgotten to tell me of her act, and had sent 
the shells to me by the dog as soon as she realized that 
I was out facing lions with an empty gun. It seems a 
miracle that I was able to load and fire before the 
crouching lion sprang, but the miracle was performed, 
and I live to tell the tale. 

The cover for deer and other game becomes more 
dense as the toll-road gives place to the road to the 
Country Club on McCloud Kiver, where some San Fran- 
ciscans resort for fishing and hunting. The back is 
turned on mighty Shasta, with the clouds that play hide 
and seek with its summit, and for twenty miles the road 
leads far above Squaw Creek, on a narrow shelf, 
through a canyon of unparalleled beauty. The slender 
stems of adjacent pines sway in the wind, sometimes 
in unison, but more often in a manner that emphasizes 
the beauty of their stately movements. The deep green 
of the firs blends at length with the lighter green of the 
oaks and the butternuts. From far beneath comes the 

237 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

sound of the rushing waters of the creek, and gradually, 
from beyond, comes the deeper boom of the glorious 
McCloud Eiver, bom of Shasta snows, bearer of life to 
countless fields, home of the trout that swim so tanta- 
lizingly close. The waters of the river are actually 
ten, fifteen, twenty feet deep, even when they seem 
most invitingly shallow. Many think of the McCloud 
as the most beautiful stream in California. 

Squaw Creek Canyon affords one of the best oppor- 
tunities, in a region readily accessible, to see a virgin 
forest in a great watershed that feeds the streams of a 
fertile land. "Within easy reach are other canyons and 
slopes from which the forests have been removed by the 
lumberman or by fire. Some of these areas are being 
replanted with pines from the interesting Pilgrim Creek 
Nursery, a few miles away, within the shadow of Shasta. 
There hundreds of thousands of baby trees await the 
time of their transplanting to one of the bare areas. 
Ask the nurseryman what these trees will be like in 
ten years. ''If all is well they will be as high as you 
are," he answers. **And fifty years hence?" With a 
smile he points to a tree perhaps thirty feet high. * '"We 
are working for future generations, ' ' he explained. The 
real forester must know how to be a dreamer as well 
as a practical man. 

Perhaps twelve miles from the nursery, and a little 
closer to Shasta, there is an industry that destroys in 
a few moments the forest growth of years — the McCloud 
Eiver Lumber Company, operating two of the greatest 
mills in California. It is a part of the work of the 
modern forester to show how such miUs can be run 
with real benefit to the forests, :and this company 

238 



IN THE MOUNT SHASTA COUNTRY 

operates, in part, on trees cut from government land, 
under skilled supervision. 

There are few industrial sights so fascinating as 
those presented by a modern saw-mill like that at 
McCloud. The machinery seems almost human, and the 
men who tend it act with machine-like precision. Watch 
the endless chain that drags the logs from the pond 
into the mill ; the steam-driven cross-cut saw that sends 
them on in proper lengths for cutting ; the eager, sullen 
steel fingers that roll the log on the carriage or change 
its position that another side of it may be squared ; the 
head sawyer, always on the alert, never at a loss, who 
gives his directions in dumb show to the men who tend 
the log on the carriage ; the endless band-saw that cuts 
through the log as if it were cheese; the flying saw- 
dust, now of pine, again of fragrant cedar, that makes 
one think of an old attic. Not a lost motion, not a lost 
moment, not a lost bit of product — even the sawdust 
feeds the fires below. Small logs, which would be called 
large in many parts of the country, are squared and 
cut to planks in from two to three minutes ; a log five 
feet in diameter is reduced to lumber in seven minutes ! 

There cannot be many years before the great mill 
will be dismantled. But the forests will remain, and 
because the forests remain the McCloud River — ^with 
all the streams that come from Shasta — will flow 
serenely on toward the plains. 

And high above rivers and forests cloud-enveloped, 
snow-clad Shasta will endure, mutely inviting to its 
shelter the pilgrims who look this way for vacation joy, 
smiling from its lofty height on those who seek respite 
from care in the vacation areas so abundantly provided 
in the great Shasta Forest. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

FROM CRATER TO CRATER IN OREGON 

MOST travelers from the south, approach Port- 
land by way of the wonderfully fertile Wil- 
lamette Valley, between the Coast Range and 
the Cascade Mountains, for the convenient railroad is 
there. Thus they miss the glorious scenery of Central 
Oregon, in the Cascades and east of the mountains. 

While there is as yet no railroad route through this 
favored section, there is a system of practicable roads 
that make accessible nearly every portion of the dis- 
trict. Automobile stages go to many points to which 
railroads have not yet penetrated, and the cars of those 
who seek the famous camping or fishing grounds in 
the Deschutes National Forest may be met during the 
season in almost any road. 

The nearly two million acres of the Deschutes Forest 
are penetrated by a network of one thousand miles of 
road, in addition to trails innumerable. These roads 
and trails lead to mountain peaks where snow and 
glaciers add beauty and tempt the climber ; lakes where 
boating and fishing are provided in prodigal fashion; 
lava beds and craters which tell eloquently of upheavals 
in ages long gone ; rivers that have their source in bub- 
bling springs or melting snows; cascades that are so 
numerous it is difficult to catalogue them; ice caverns 
where the temperature is always below freezing; soda 
springs and hot springs and sulphur springs ; mountain 
meadows where cattle graze by the thousand ; and trees 
— white pine and yellow pine, spruce and fir and hem- 
lock, lodge pole pine and other kindred forest growth. 

240 



FROM CRATER TO CRATER IN OREGON 

The Cascade Mountains, which are the backbone of 
the Deschutes Forest, really begin in California. Best- 
less Lassen Peak perhaps marks the southern limit of 
the system, while Mount Shasta dominates it on the 
south as does Mount Rainier on the north. 

Mount Shasta is long in the view of those who pass 
northward on the search for the Oregon Cascades. 
Klamath Falls, from its commanding situation on Kla- 
math Lake— the largest body of fresh water west of 
the Rocky Mountains— looks away to Shasta with pro- 
found appreciation of its utHity; the twenty-five thou- 
sand Indians who live on the great Klamath Indian 
Reservation— every adult of them said to be worth, on 
the average, twenty-five thousand dollars— know of 
Shasta and delight in its beauty. 

Reluctantly the traveler loses sight of Shasta, but 
soon— just before he comes to the bounds of the Des- 
chutes Forest— he is under the shadow of the mighty 
peak that hides the wonder on whose account a national 
park has been created— Mount Mazama, in the dim 
past an active volcano until it lost its head and wel- 
comed Crater Lake to its embrace. Once the mountain 
must have been lofty as other volcanic peaks of the 
Cascades— Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, Mount Rainier 
and a dozen more. But the cone blew off or fell in — 
how many thousand feet of it cannot be guessed— and 
the only reminders of the days of ages of fire long gone 
by are the great ridges that form the massive, lofty 
rim of the lake on the mountain top. 

The approach is easy to this marvel of which the 
sadly overworked word *' unique" can be used with pro- 
priety. Automobile roads climb to the lake both from the 
east and from the west, and these roads are usually open 

241 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

by July 1 or a few days earlier. But when the author 
made his pilgrimage to what Joaquin Miller called ' ' The 
Sea of Silence," great drifts of snow still blocked the 
way, and it was necessary to leave the machine and 
clamber for two miles over the barrier. This was for- 
tunate ; snow-climbing proved the best possible prepara- 
tion for the vision that opened unexpectedly as the 
final drift was surmounted — a lake that glowed like a 
great jewel of amethyst one thousand feet below the 
precipice to which the road leads. The first white man 
who stood here, in 1853, insisted on calling it Deep 
Blue Lake, and the name persisted until 1869; then it 
w^as changed to Crater Lake. 

But Crater Lake is blue, wonderfully blue, unbeliev- 
ably blue. The varied color scheme of the pine-clad lava 
walls emphasizes by contrast the regal beauty of the 
waters in the depths which seem to speak the words of 
the Psalmist, '^Be still, and know that I am God." 
Thus they spoke to the Indians ; the Klamaths and the 
Modocs believed that their god Gaywas lived in the lake. 
And thus the waters speak to visitors to-day ; a timber- 
man who for the first time gazed in rapture on the lake 
and its surroundings took off his hat, lifted his hand 
to heaven, and said, reverently, ' ' How can anyone who 
looks at that doubt that there is a God!" 

The surface of the lake is broken by two rocky 
islets — Wizard Island, which the Indians declared was 
the head of an enemy of their god, who was thrown into 
the water. Then there is the smaller, Phantom Ship — 
so called because, to those who take the delightful trip 
over the lake in a motor boat, it seems to disappear 
and then reappear in a most puzzling manner. Of 
course the explanation of the mystery is the changing 

242 











^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> i :J ^^^1 


^^mm^P^'l^ 




FROM CRATER TO CRATER IN OREGON 

lights and shadows far down beneath the encircling 
cliffs, some of them two thousand feet high. 

For years the only way to circle the lake was on the 
surface of the water, but there is now a road around 
the entire rim — first used in 1919 — from which the 
ever-changing beauties of this queen of mountain lakes 
can be studied at leisure. This road is to be a part 
of the great scenic highway that is to lead along the 
summits of the Cascades, all the way to Mount Hood. 
For a distance of two hundred miles this road in the 
clouds will be a mile or more high. 

In silence the visitor leaves Crater Lake, but, if he 
takes the road along Sand Creek — ^which is bom on 
Mount Mazama — he will soon find his voice, in amaze- 
ment at the hundreds of lava chimneys that rise like 
church spires from the sides of the canyon where the 
creek has its bed. These hollow vents are fifty, one hun- 
dred, even one hundred and fifty feet high, and are in 
plain view from the road down the mountain. 

The fascinating roads lead leisurely away through 
the forest — now up, now down, through aisles of great 
trees, and along torrents from the mountains; now 
crossing them over rustic bridges, again fording them 
in most attractive spots. After sixty miles of such 
roads Odell Lake appears, a highland bit of liquid 
beauty, where campers and fishermen delight to go, and 
where many of those who search for the beautiful say 
they find more real satisfaction than even at Crater 
Lake. ''I can't tell you why I enjoy looking at Odell as 
I do, " one visitor said. ' ' To describe this lake is impos- 
sible. You are right here, looking at things as they 
were made, and you can no more tell about it in precise 
terms than you can tell why you love your best friend. ' ' 

243 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

But even if it is impossible to describe Odell accu- 
rately, it is possible to have such an experience of its 
charms that these will never be forgotten. Take a good 
look at the lake from the hill on which the comfortable 
log cabin resort for the tourist is built. Cruise in a 
motor boat along twenty miles of varied shore line. 
Look up at the snow-clad peaks to the right and to the 
left — Crater Butte and Diamond Peak and Maiden 
Peak. Look down at their reflection in the clear water, 
where the trout can be seen many feet below the surface. 
Enter a bay with its beach sloping gently from the pines, 
or take the shore at a point where the water drops 
quickly away to the depths. Eamble through the pri- 
meval forest that clothes the shores, the ridges and the 
mountains as far as the eye can reach. Scramble along 
the banks of Trapper Creek, or Maiden Creek, from 
the mouth as far back as you choose to go. Climb the 
rock slide on Diamond Point, and look down at the blue 
lake three hundred feet below, and over to Diamond 
Peak, with its glacier-burdened slopes. Look, and say 
that life is good. Do this and other things like this — 
for a day, if you have only a day ; for a week, if you can 
spend so long a time there. And see if you will not for- 
get to grouch ! You will go away a better man, easier 
to live with and a lot more comfortable to yourself. 

In this enchanted land lakes by the score lie along 
the forest roads and trails. Some day every one of them 
will have a thousand visitors for one who goes there 
to-day; some day sumptuous hotels will invite the tour- 
ist. Now, however, those who go to these places can 
have the joy of finding primitive conditions ; there may 
be a log cabin camp with its evening fire in the massive 
fireplace, and its morning ice-bound water-bucket — even 

244 



FROM CRATER TO CRATER IN OREGON 

in June or July — giving chill greeting to those who 
would fill the wash-basin. Or it may be necessary to 
seek the hospitality of some Forest Eanger, or to eat in 
a cow camp, or with the timber cruisers — the men who 
look at a tree as a character analyst looks at a man, and 
make accurate estimate of the standing timber in a 
section of the forest. 

For a time, in 1919, a company of timber cruisers had 
their headquarters on the edge of Crane's Prairie, not 
far from Odell Lake, a remarkable mountain meadow 
where the forest opens out to make pasture for thou- 
sands of cattle. The tumultuous Deschutes Eiver winds 
its way along its borders — a stream whose flow is so 
regular that it is possible for the highway to cross it 
by bridges that are but a foot or two above the water. 
Any surplus supply of water is lost in the lava through 
which the river flows. 

All through the Deschutes Forest there are marks 
of the days of fire when the lava poured down from the 
craters and overwhelmed the earth. Great ridges rise 
here and there, like slag from an immense steel furnace. 
Buttes are found in unexpected places, their conical 
sides one mass of lava. And everywhere are mountains 
that once belched forth molten fire, but long since be- 
come cold and dead. 

Most of these craters are worthy of notice, but there 
is one in particular that surpasses its neighbors as 
the sun surpasses the moon. Not far from the Des- 
chutes River, as it approaches the lumber-mill town 
of Bend, is Newberry Crater — with the exception of 
Mount Mazama perhaps the most remarkable of all 
the one-time channels of fire in the journey from the 
bowels of the earth. 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Mount Newberry rises three thousand feet above the 
valley of the river, which is itself more than four thou- 
sand feet high. The summit is easy of access, a road 
practicable for automobiles leading upward through 
the pine forests until it emerges within the old-time 
crater. This is eight miles across and of proportionate 
circumference. Within the uplifted walls of the crater 
nestles Paulina Lake. Separated from Paulina by a 
lofty obsidian ridge, and seventy feet higher, is East 
Lake. On its shore is a little hotel where visitors are 
learning to go, attracted by the beauty of the surround- 
ings or by the curative properties of the boiling water 
that gushes up everywhere within the crater, in re- 
sponse to borings in the lava bed. Some day soon there 
will surely be here a modern hotel, adapted to the needs 
of tourists and health-seekers. In the meantime visitors 
have the privilege of seeing the lakes before their com- 
mercial exploitation begins. 

The twin lakes were long a favorite resort of the 
Indians, who delighted to glide in their canoes over the 
waters of East Lake, waters remarkably still save for 
the surface bubbling of the thousands of springs far 
beneath. Or they liked to pass from Paulina Lake along 
its outlet, Paulina Creek, and stand in wonder before 
the falls where the stream leaps from the lake level 
over the precipices of lava into the glacier-made can- 
yon leading toward the Deschutes. Usually, however, 
their errand to the wonderland of the crater was less 
peaceable. Scattered everywhere were great masses 
of obsidian, the glass-like substance that served so 
admirably for their arrow-heads and other weapons of 
war. Arrow-heads left behind by these old-time artifi- 
cers may still be found near the shores of the lakes. 

246 




NOKl'H FORK OF ROGUE RIVER, OREGON, XEAK MEDFORD 




WHITE PELICANS ON KLAMATH LAKE 




PAULINA FALLS, NEAR NEWBEKKY CRATER, ORECiON 



FROM CRATER TO CRATER IN OREGON 

The best view of the lakes of Newberry Crater is 
not from their shore, or even from the ridge that 
separates them, but from the rocky summit of Paulina 
Peak, nearly two thousand feet above, reached l)y a trail 
that is practicable for almost anybody. The steepness 
of the comparatively short way is forgotten when the 
beholder looks down on the lakes in their setting of 
green, with lava precipices and ridges about them, and 
on the lava flow near by which seems like a writhing 
river, turning round and round in whirls, frozen, black, 
forbidding. Then the eye leaps to an overwhelming 
prospect, a vision of tremendous extent and grandeur. 
To the north, far across intervening plains and lesser 
mountains, appear Mount Adams, Mount Jefferson, 
Mount Hood, and even Mount Rainier. To the west are 
the Three Sisters, Diamond Peak, and Bachelor Butte. 
In the east, the barren, yellow plains of the Great Sandy 
Desert, Hampton and Glass Buttes, and the far-away 
mountains of Nevada lift their heads. To the south is 
Mount Shasta ; and to the northwest are Mount Scott 
and Mount Thielsen. Thus from this one elevated point 
of vantage summits in four states are visible. 

Sometimes, even in summer, weeks pass without the 
coming of anyone to rejoice in this tremendous vision. 
But every day of the summer there is one who keeps 
his lonely vigil on Paulina Summit — the keen-eyed 
observer who, from his rocky observatory, sweeps his 
eye over miles of forest, prepared to send instant word 
to forest headquarters of the first sign of a fire that 
might threaten countless miles of priceless timber. 

And he is but one of the sturdy, fearless men who 
watch thus over the area set apart for the enjoyment of 
the people and the enrichment of the land. 



CHAPTER XXVn 
A MOUNTAIN DINNER, AND OTHER DINNERS 

THE town of Bend, Oregon, is noted not only be- 
cause of its huge sawTnills but also because it is 
a convenient starting point for all sorts of trips, 
each of compelling interest and peculiar beauty. Some 
of them may be made by rail, others by motor, and still 
others by trail. 

Perhaps the most attractive short trip is northwest 
for fifty miles, through valley and forest, with white- 
crowned peaks rising in almost continuous line on the 
west — Broken Top and Bachelor Butte, Three Sisters 
and Mt. Washington, Three-fingered Jack and Mt. Jef- 
ferson — a noteworthy succession of summits from 
which it is diflBcult to turn the eyes to more prosaic 
sights like the Tumalo dam, a state project not entirely 
successful because no way has been found to retain the 
water that persists in filtering away through the lava 
beds. Yet the sight of the sagebrush on land untouched 
by water and the contrasting green fields of the home- 
steaders nerves the projectors to keep on striving for 
the reward that will certainly crown their efforts to add 
one more triumph to the epic of desert conquest. 

At length the forests vie with the mountains in hold- 
ing the eye. In these forests the brown of the curiously 
marked bark of the yellow pine harmonizes well with 
the vivid green of the feathery larches. Then, high 
above the forest, there towers the great bulk of Black 
Butte — called black, perhaps, because it is not bare as 
are some other volcanic cones of the region ; it is really 
green with the pines that crowd its pleasing, sym- 

248 



MOUNTAIN DINNER, OTHER DINNERS 

metrical slope. In a spring near the base of th© butte 
the Metolius River has its biri;h, and soon the road is 
winding along the banks of this swiftly-flowing stream 
where the fisherman has learned to seek the elusive 
trout. Here and there in sequestered nooks by the 
Metolius are permanent camps where pioneering boni- 
faces look after the comfort of the anglers. 

On a glorious day in June four men motored along 
the Metolius, in full enjoyment of the rare country. 
Just at lunch-time a house was seen on whose front 
was placarded an invitation to rest and eat. But the 
driver said the men should go on a few miles to a place 
hidden away in a bend of the Metolius. He assured 
them that they would not be sorry if they waited, for 
the dinners cooked there were famous. 

At last the ranch was so close that it was almost 
possible to smell the dinner. But within a mile or 
two of the promised land a morass across the road 
caused the driver to shake his head anxiously. A detour 
led to within a short distance of the dinner, when a 
bridge repair gang announced, '*No thoroughfare." 
Again a detour brought the hungry quartette within 
shouting distance of the delectable meal. Imagination 
was working overtime on crisp trout and blueberry pie 
w^hen a machine loaded to the guards approached. 
''How's that for luck?" the driver asked, emphatically. 
Was something wrong with the engine ? Would a third 
delay be necessary? But a more awful disclosure was 
to be made. "That's the whole blooming family from 
the ranch — the Mr., the Mrs., the cook and all the rest," 
the driver said, in deep disgust. ''Now doesn't that 
jar you?" 

But he drove on. What else was there to do? Per- 

249 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

haps one of the girls had been left behind to look after 
the house, or possibly the door would be open, after 
the easy-going, confident manner of Oregon dwellers 
in the countiy. 

Yes, the door was open. But for form's sake a 
halloo was given and there came an answering hail 
from the bam. In a moment the son of the house 
was at hand. 

''Now ain't that too bad!" he said. "Four hungry 
men, and the folks all gone to the dance at Tumalo. 
Me? Oh, I'm shearing the sheep! I've finished with 
seventy-two, and there are only two hundred in all. 
. . . No, I don't care to go to dances and such 
foolishness. Me for the woods and the j^ver, every 
time. . . . Yes, I stay here the year round. Towns 
get my goat. Last winter the folks went to town, but 
I stayed on the place. . . . Lonesome 1 Nothing to 
it! The place to get lonesome is in a big town like 
Bend. ... I had the time of my life here. There 
was plenty of work, and there was lots of loafing. 
Killed three deer, the two the law allowed, and one 
I didn 't get the winter before. You should have seen 
the buck that led me a chase beginning at that point 
of rock over there ; he was off before I could pot him, 
across the river and through the pines. Finally I got 
him over there on Green Eidge. . . . Get tired of 
deer meat, you say? I could eat it three times a day, 
every day in the year. . . . Snow? Oh, yes, it did 
snow some. See that fence? Well, the snow was up 
to the top bar. . . . Can I cook? Well, I guess — 
but not like Marm. You should taste her dinner. Don't 
ask any Oregon rancher if he can cook. . . . Like 

250 



MOUNTAIN DINNER, OTHER DINNERS 

something to eat soon, you say? Well, just wait till I 
change these sheep clothes and wash up!" 

It was a pleasure to see the way he went at that din- 
ner. Some school of domestic science ought to endow a 
chair of kitchen fire-building and invite that young 
sheep-shearer to be the incumbent. And the way he 
cooked ! It would not be fair to tell what was set on the 
table an hour later ; there might be too many inquiries 
for the location of that ranch. 

After dinner the cook was persuaded to leave his 
beloved sheep long enough to point out the trail to a 
camp five miles down the river. *' First time I've been 
here in three years," he said. Now that the unwonted 
outing had been taken those who heard him wondered 
if he would wait three years more before repeating 
the performance. Perhaps so — at least if one could 
judge from the eager lope with which he hurried off 
to the ranch when he was deposited a mile away in 
the forest. 

The sheep-shearer had company among the cooks 
who ministered to the quartette that week. There was 
the lone tender of the dam at Pringle Falls, the deserted 
village in the forest where the sawmill stands idle with 
a log on the carriage, where the workmen's homes are 
empty and the closed post-office still contains in the 
boxes papers uncalled for when the town met the fate 
of so many settlements in the forest. Fortunately the 
home of the watcher at the old dam was occupied, and 
what a dinner he did cook ! Fish was the chief thing on 
the bill of fare — fish directly from the stream, fish by 
the platterful, more fish for each hungry man than 
it is wise to say. 

Another sawmill that was not deserted was ap- 

251 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

proached just as the whistle sounded the welcome call 
to the mid-day meal. The hungry travelers were given 
leave to respond with the workers, and they decided 
that those mill men have no cause for complaint against 
the autocrat the company has placed in charge of the 
kitchen. Quickly the bountifully spread table was 
cleared, and then the men, each bearing his own dishes 
with him to the pantry, hurried away, some to work 
and some to play. 

A cook who knew his business was found at a camp 
of timber cruisers in the depths of the forest. * ' Sorry 
I haven't anything extra to give you," he apologized. 
But if the meal he served was ordinaiy, let ordinary 
cooking be made compulsory ! Men of the woods need 
substantial food, well cooked, and the cook at that camp 
knows how to give it to them. 

On a lonely peak nearly nine thousand feet high, 
at a forest signal station, the travelers found a man on 
lookout duty. His supplies of food were still meagre ; 
most of the eatables provided for him were waiting far 
down the trail below the drifted snow. But the men 
helped him bring in the cached supplies, and then were 
ready to share his fare. They were thirsty, too, but 
when they saw how little water there was in his cistern 
above the clouds they forgot thirst, and wished him well 
in his task of filling the tank with snow that water 
might be at hand during the long days and nights of 
his summer vigil. 

Perhaps the best-remembered dinner of the season 
of western wandering was served at Stehekin, the 
landing-place nestling at the upper end of wonderful 
Lake Chelan, in Washington, in the shadow of the tow- 
ering Cascades. During the fifty-mile trip on the little 

252 




I,AVA LAKE, THE THREE SISTERS, AND BACHELOR BUTTE, OREGON 




HUD^K U.)l K M^^(l, I.AKK CHELAN 



MOUNTAIN DINNER, OTHER DINNERS 

steamer the appetite of the travelers was stimulated 
by tales of the glorious trout taken from the waters of 
the lake. So at Stehekin's hotel request was made for 
a fish for dinner. *' Sorry we cannot oblige you," was 
the reply of the host. ' ' You see, the law will not permit 
us to serve fish ! ' ' 

"With a sigh the determination was made to put up 
with plain bacon for another meal. But skies cleared 
instantly when a young woman near the clerk said: 
*'We caught a string of beauties this morning, and we 
can 't eat them all. Choose your fish ! ' ' 

The men-hungry-for-trout turned to see two laugh- 
ing young women in outing costume proudly holding up 
an array of fish. They smiled at the protest that one 
fish would be sufficient for two men. ''No, you want 
one each ; they do not weigh more than two pounds and 
a quarter to two pounds and a half I ' ' "Why refuse an 
invitation like that? 

When the fish were handed over by the generous 
catchers they looked appetizing enough. But when they 
were laid on the table, glistening, brown, crowned with 
bacon and lemon, who could resist them? Half an hour 
later not a shred of either trout remained. 

There is nothing like mountain wandering to make 
meals appetizing — that is, nothing but hard work. Yet 
the day comes when work drags and appetite fails. Then 
off for the deep forest, the steep trail, or the winding 
river, and find new life ! 



CHAPTER XXVIII 
THROUGH CANYON AND GORGE TO PORTLAND 

UNTIL recently map-makers called Bend Fare- 
Avell Bend. The name was given by pioneers 
bound for the Willamette Valley because here, 
at the one spot practicable for crossing the Deschutes, 
they had their last view of the river. 

Almost the entire distance from Bend to the Colum- 
bia, the Deschutes is hidden far down between canyon 
walls that were as forbidding to the pioneer as they 
are now inviting to those who delight in looking on 
scenic grandeur or who wish to examine the records 
of earth-building. 

Not many years ago it was impossible to study the 
great gash in the earth, except at isolated places. Now, 
however, two railroads follow the river from the mouth 
up to Bend, for those rivals in railroad strategy. Hill 
and Harriman, ran a race to see who would first reach 
the headwaters of the Deschutes. The story of the 
struggle is one of the fascinating chapters in the record 
of railroad building. Legal battles and illegal clashes 
between the construction forces were finally ended by a 
truce, and for the last sixty miles of the journey the 
two roads use one track. 

Fortunately the entire distance may be traversed 
during the day, so that it is possible to study the 
canyon in all its marvelous outlines, and to carry away 
some idea of what the United States Geological Survey 
has called "the fascinating story of deep erosion, of 
subsequent lava flows of vast extent, and of renewed 

254 



' ^m. 




COLUMNAR BASALT CLIFFS 



THROUGH CANYON AND GORGE 

outpourings of molten rock, followed by another long 
period during which streams renewed the work of denu- 
dation and canyon cutting." Massive and extensive 
as the canyon is, it gives but a hint of the vast extent 
of the lava fields and volcanic mountains of the north- 
west, for it is estimated that "not less than 150,000 
cubic miles of dense rock have there been transferred 
from deep within the earth and spread out on its sur- 
face." These lava deposits vary in appearance from 
the glass mountains and peaks of white pumice in a 
part of Southern Oregon where one traveler said he 
felt as if he were living over Alice in Wonderland, 
to the black, forbidding ridges of lava and the buttes 
and canyon walls farther north. 

In cutting the path through a great lava-covered 
plain the Deschutes has found its way far below walls 
where regular pyramids and rugged peaks, castellated 
crags and symmetrical cones follow one another with 
bewildering rapidity ; where columns of basalt stand out 
in the precipices, sometimes in most orderly array, 
again in fascinating confusion ; where overlying layers 
of sandstone lend color to the abyss. The gorge is fre- 
quently a mile wide and eight hundred feet deep, and at 
least five distinct geological episodes can be traced in 
a study of the walls. First came a deposit of volcanic 
dust ; then lava covered the dust ; then the river cut its 
way through the lava ; then a second lava flow filled the 
canyon to a depth of some five hundred feet; and 
finally the river cut its way once more through the later 
lava flow. 

The journey through the Deschutes canyon should 
come before the study of the great Columbia Gorge 
from the mouth of the smaller river on to the Pacific. 

255 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

During countless ages the great "River of the West" 
has fashioned a gorge that those who have traveled the 
world over say is not to be matched anywhere. Visitors 
may say, "That reminds me of the Highlands of the 
Hudson," but before they complete the journey they are 
apt to forget comparisons in the silent ecstasy of those 
who realize that they are gazing on one of the master- 
pieces of the Architect of the Universe. 

Proudly the Oregon Bureau of Mines and Geology 
calls attention to the fact that the Columbia is one of 
earth's greatest rivers, and that more than twenty-one 
hundred miles of the stream and its tributaries are 
navigable water. Then it adds a statement far more 
picturesque than any figures: "The Columbia River is 
further distinguished because of its having cleaved from 
summit to base, completely through the structure of a 
great mountain mass — the Cascade Range. ... As 
a result of her prowess . . . the river has become 
the front doorway to a vast empire. ' ' 

From the time of the first discoverers of the Colum- 
bia to the stirring days of the Hudson Bay Company's 
traders and trappers, and of the emigrants who made 
their toilsome way down the valley toward the sea, there 
have been recorded tales of amazement at the wonders 
of the river scenery. The building of the railroads, first 
along the south bank, then along the north bank, enabled 
thousands to enjoy these wonders where before one had 
been able to do so. But not until the recent completion 
of the great Columbia River Highway, magnificent in 
conception and stupendous in achievement, has it be- 
come possible to see the river and its noble surround- 
ings as these cannot be seen from the windows of a 
Pullman car. For years Samuel C. Lancaster dreamed 

256 



THROUGH CANYON AND GORGE 

of the road and talked of it to those who laughed at his 
idea. But he clung fondly and persistently to his vision ; 
again and again he toiled over the bluffs and the moun- 
tains, seeking the most practicable route. At last he saw 
the day when funds were available, and the project 
was finally completed. Then his acquaintances no 
longer laughed; gladly they joined the hundreds of 
thousands who each year pass over the Highway. 

The United States Forestry Service is cooperating 
with the authorities of counties and states in making 
the Highway of greatest service to the people. A 
portion of it traverses the Columbia Gorge Park Divis- 
ion of the Oregon National Forest, a division which 
includes about fourteen thousand acres, all dedicated 
to purposes of recreation, so that not only the tourist, 
but also the fisherman, the camper and the lover of the 
long trail may be satisfied here. 

Noteworthy among the recreation areas is Eagle 
Creek Canyon, where there are camp grounds, parking 
space, comfort stations and a winding trail that goes 
far back up the gorge of Eagle Creek to beautiful Punch 
Bowl Falls, two miles from the river, and the Wahtum 
Lal^e, fifteen miles farther. The story is told of one 
of those who laid out the trail that one day, when on a 
narrow path on the face of a precipice, he was con- 
fronted by a bear that disputed the passage. The 
trail-maker had no weapon, but in desperation he raised 
his hand and waved Bruin back. The bear retreated, 
hesitated, then returned. This time the endangered 
man raised both hands in warning and appeal. Once 
more the animal walked backward most sedately. Then, 
after a second pause, he returned to confront the man 
on the trail. Finally the man raised both hands and 

17 257 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

gave a whoop of — was it of terror ? This was too much. 
Bruin retreated a third time, and was not seen again. 

While most travelers begin the delightful Gorge tour 
at Portland, it is really better to go down the river 
towards the city by the Willamette, from the point 
where the Deschutes joins fortunes with the larger 
river, or from Hood Eiver, the little city at the mouth 
of the fertile valley of that name, one of the numerous 
valleys in Oregon, famous for land so well adapted to 
the growth of luscious fruits. 

For seventy miles from Hood River the journey is a 
bewildering succession of vistas of river and mountains, 
from easy stretches of perfect road ; from the portals of 
a tunnel through a massive cliff, where parapets have 
been built out from the precipice; from lofty Crown 
Point, approached by one of the finest bits of road- 
building on the continent, a long succession of figure- 
eights, where the grade never exceeds five per cent, 
and the radius of the curve is never less than one hun- 
dred feet. Near the summit of Crown Point the bal- 
conies of Vista House and the balustrades before it 
afford a view up and down the broad river for seventy 
miles — a view of cliff and island, of graceful bends and 
long sweeps between, of glittering cascades and more 
quiet waters, of green mountain slopes and tremendous 
precipices of columnar basalt. The changing lights of 
morning, noon and night give infinite variety to the 
stately scene, but the prospect is best at sunset, when 
the long and varied stretch of water becomes golden 
glory, when green mountain and nestling island, rocky 
precipice and uplifted pinnacle, are painted as no artist 
would dare to paint them. 

There are precipices along the river that do not need 

258 




INTERIOR OF MITCHELLS POINT TUNNELS, COLUMUIA 
RIVER HIGHWAY, SHOWING " THE FIVE WINDOWS " 




WILLAMEITE VALLEY, NEAR NEWBURG, OREGON 



THROUGH CANYON AND GORGE 

to wait for the coloring of the sunset. Prominent among 
these are Red Bluffs, a portion of the north abutment of 
the Bridge of the Gods, which, according to Indian myth, 
once stretched at a great height and for a distance of 
five miles above the river. According to the wonder- 
tale this bridge was built by Sahali, the Great Spirit, 
who separated the Klickitats of the north from the 
Multnomahs of the west, by raising between them the 
Cascade Eange. Through the mountains flowed the 
Columbia, and across the river was thrown the great 
bridge. On the bridge was stationed Loowit, guardian 
of the sacred fire, the only fire in the world, from which 
the Indians of all tribes received supplies. Among the 
Indian chiefs who fell in love with the beautiful guar- 
dian was Klickitat from the north and Wiyeast from the 
west. The rivals went to war and ravaged the land. In 
anger Sahali broke down the bridge and killed the fire- 
guardian, as well as the two chiefs. Over their graves 
he built great monuments; Mount St. Helens became 
a monument to the fire-guardian, while Mount Hood and 
Mount Adams commemorated the rival chiefs. It is 
easy to see the broken abutments of the bridge far up 
on Table Mountain, the fragments of rock in the river 
below, and the snow-capped peaks named in the legend. 
The haunting beauty of fairy-like waterfalls will be 
one of the most treasured of all the memories of the 
Columbia Gorge trip. Most of them may be seen from 
the Highway, though some are hidden back in tributary 
canyons. Metlaka Falls in Eagle Creek, two miles from 
the river, are more than one hundred feet high, while 
Oneonta Falls, less than a thousand feet from the High- 
way, are nearly as high. Wahclella Falls, in Tanner 
Creek, are higher still, and Elowah Falls, on McCord 

259 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Creek, descend nearly three hundred feet. Horsetail 
Falls, more than two hundred feet high; Multnomah 
Falls, six hundred and twenty feet high, and Latourell 
Falls, more than two hundred feet high, are visible from 
the Highway itself. 

While the falls can be seen to greatest advantage 
only by those who stand close to them, there are other 
features of the river landscapes that are visible from 
many points on the Highway. The Pillars of Hercules, 
one of them crowned by a single pine tree, are monoliths 
of basalt dwarfing the trains that pass at their base. 
St. Peter's Dome rises two thousand feet above the 
river. Then there is Beacon Rock, on the north shore, 
named by Lewis and Clark in 1806, where — tradition 
says — ^the voyageurs of the Hudson Bay Company on 
their annual journey to Vancouver were accustomed to 
begin their homecoming song. A trail four thousand 
feet long has been built up this great rock, that visitors 
may be able to enjoy the wide vista from its top, eight 
hundred feet above the river. 

Portland rejoices in having such an approach as is 
afforded by the Columbian Gorge and the twenty miles 
of fertile farms that come between the city and the 
majestic mountain barrier farther up the river. 

Those who see sturdy, business-like Portland, will 
smile at words of prophecy that appeared in 1868 in the 
Overland Monthly- 
It wiU be seen at a glance that the trade and com- 
merce of such a valley must in time build up and sustain 
quite a city. Yet it is not in the highway of the world. 
It will never be the center of fashion, speculation, or 
thought. Its population may not in the century, if ever, 
exceed 50,000. Yet, if any young person who reads this 

260 



THROUGH CANYON AND GORGE 

is casting about for a place where a fair stock of sense, 
industry and good habits will, within certain limits, pay 
certainly and well in any honest calling, let him or her 
take passage at once for Portland on the Willamette. 

Portland might have been known as Boston, for, in 
1848, the founders of the town — one of whom was from 
Massachusetts, while the other was from Maine — 
flipped a copper cent to decide whether the name should 
be Portland or Boston. The Maine man won. At that 
time Oregon City was the capital of Oregon, and in the 
beginning Portland was known as ''a place twelve miles 
below Oregon City." All this was changed, however, 
with the removal of the capital in 1851. In 1869 the city 
had, according to a description written at the time, 
''from eight to nine thousand inhabitants, who pay 
almost a New England respect to the Sabbath, and 
dream sometimes that it is a rival of San Francisco." 

And now, from Council Crest, the visitor looks down 
on a proud city whose population approaches three hun- 
dred thousand, and whose port rivals that of Philadel- 
phia or Baltimore. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

OLYMPIC WANDERINGS 

THE Forest Ranger who accompanied the author 
from the Columbia to the Capital of Washing- 
ton, and then on for days of delight in the Olym- 
pic Peninsula, proved a proper guide to the land whose 
name, as well as its scenery, speaks of Homer and the 
Iliad, of music and gaiety, of poetiy and pleasure. For 
he was a real musician. During a pause at a wayside 
ice-cream parlor his lingers found their way to the keys 
of a piano. At the first note an old man who had just 
started on an errand across the road, paused at the 
door, entranced; his pipe was allowed to go out, his 
eyes danced, his entire attitude showed how he was 
carried away by the tender, familiar strains he had not 
heard, perhaps, for years. The woman of the ice-cream 
parlor stood for fifteen minutes at another door, and 
not until the piano was still did she think of the dishes 
she had gone to fill. 

The forester proved his skill a second time, when, 
during the hour after sunset, he began to sing old bal- 
lads in a subdued tenor that charmed away the weari- 
ness of a long day ^s travel and made a chance passenger, 
picked up by the way, forget the pain because of which 
he was going to a physician in Olympia. 

A third time the revelation came when a tree or a 
mountain, a bird or a cloud, would turn his thoughts to 
Bryant or Wordsworth, Kipling or Stevenson, Shakes- 
peare or Browning, and he would softly and sympa- 
thetically quote a few lines or a stanza or two, some- 

262 



OLYMPIC WANDERINGS 

times an entire poem, never obtrusively, but always so 
as to deepen the impression made by the landscape as 
he led the way through forest aisles where tall straight 
trunks reach like green flagpoles far aloft, by rivers, 
sweeping proudly to the Pacific, or over Cowlitz Praine, 
with Mount St. Helens on the east and Mount Banner 
looking down from the north. This prairie, by the way, 
was the scene of the Hudson Bay Company's farming 
operations in a day when they scattered far and near 
the gloomy tidings that the Oregon Country could never 
be the home of husbandmen. Fortunately their inter- 
ested propaganda was made ineffective by such men as 
Marcus Whitman and Jason Lee, who carried back to 
friends in the East the word that the territory that is 
now Washington and Oregon could support millions. 

To-day the millions foretold make their homes m the 
favored land, while representatives of other miUions 
seek the country each year for purposes of recreation. 
Unfortunately, however, most of those who go to Wash- 
ington confine their investigations to that portion ot 
the state that lies east of Puget Sound, unmmdful of 
the fact that to the west of that extensive mlet from 
the Pacific lies a land that is crowded with mountains 
for the climber, lakes for the boatman, rivers and 
streams for the angler, and forests filled with game 
for the hunter— forests that boast one-seventeenth of ail 
the merchantable timber in the United States. 

A few years ago this rich section was difficult ot 
access, but, since the completion of the Olympic High- 
way and the continued development of the Olympic 
National Forest, there is no excuse for passmg on the 
other side of the marvels of the peninsula 

From Olympia the Highway leads to Hood s Canal, 

263 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

the arm of Puget Sound that looks like the Highlands 
of the Hudson, with added charms of its own that make 
the forty-mile journey along its western shores one 
prolonged experience of gladness. And when the spark- 
ling blue waterway is left behind, its place is taken by 
long journeys through vast forests of Douglas fir and 
cedar and hemlock where the eye turns with keen relish 
to the ranks of trees among which darkness reigns 
even at mid-day, or follows the tall stems upward until 
they seem to touch the blue sky. Sometimes the road 
drops into a mountain glen where the sunlight barely 
penetrates to the ground, or takes precarious foothold 
on a winding ledge far above a canyon in whose depths 
a snow-fed stream rushes on to some convenient river, 
among the trees that clothe the sides of the abyss up to 
the Highway or far up the opposite slope, joining the 
forest on the mountain side. 

It is good to be among Washington's wonderful 
trees early in the morning, when the sun is casting 
young shadows. Yet those who pass through the dense 
timber growth at noontime think this the best time of 
all. Some prefer a rainy day, when the thick foliage 
is like an umbrella and the forest has the air of profound 
mystery. But the choicest hour is the twilight, when 
the cedars on some stand like minarets against the eve- 
ning sky, when the tops of the firs and the hemlocks 
are graceful silhouettes with a background of blue 
fading into gray. 

The winding road along the ridge above Elwha River 
— whose milky waters tell of their origin amid the 
glaciers of Anderson Range — seems to the traveler to 
be the acme of a forest road, until he goes farther and 
finds Douglas firs that are so many feet in diameter that 
ZH 



OLYMPIC WANDERINGS 

it is perhaps better not to give figures ; cedars that are 
stately as a monument, and hemlocks that stand like 
sentinels in the midst of their crowding neighbors. 
Sometimes these roads wind in bewildering fashion 
among the monarchs; again they lead straight as an 
arrow for three or four and once even for six miles. 
So thick are the trees that those bordering the roadside 
seem to be planted at regular intervals, and in a line 
almost exact. Under the trees are the ferns and the 
moss-grown prostrate trunks, or the rhododendrons, or 
sometimes the bushes that flaunt their yellow or red 
salmon berries, the delight of the bears that are still 
found in these Olympic shades. 

Yes, there are bears here, and w^olves, and elk. Chris, 
the veteran Forest Eanger, who came to the country 
from a New York City banking house when he was nine- 
teen years old, tells of his recent pursuit by two wolves 
that refused to be scared away until he had beguiled and 
deceived them for an hour. He will not soon forget 
those long moments of tense anxiety. He has more 
pleasure in thinking of the eight thousand elk now 
scattered over the mountains of his forest, in conse- 
quence of the law that threw protecting arms about them 
when they w^ere in danger of extinction. 

The Elwha Eiver is a favorite haunt of the elk, as 
it was the scene of the contest of wits with the persistent 
wolves. Just beyond the Elwha lies Crescent Lake, 
where Chris once picked up the magnificent spreading 
horns dropped by an elk in moulting season, horns later 
sold for four hundred dollars. 

Crescent Lake is the rear entrance to the wonders 
of the Olympic Mountains. Its blue waters rest amid 
surrounding foothills which crowd close and once almost 

265 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

come together, forcing the lake to make the passage that 
helps to give to it the shape from which it takes its name. 

Until recently the lake was a link in the Olympic 
Highway ; the road had not been built around its shore, 
and county ferries carried travelers for the ten miles 
between the section of the road from Olympia and the 
western section leading to the Pacific and the village of 
the Siwash Indian seal-hunters beyond Mora. 

When the Olympic Highway claims the south shore 
of Crescent Lake, this once almost inaccessible water- 
way will be entirely surrounded by the arteries of 
civilization and progress. For, in 1918, on the north 
shore, was completed one of those stupendous govern- 
ment works that hastened the coming of peace in the 
Great War — the Spruce Division Railway, which was to 
bring from recesses of the Olympic forest the timber 
needed for the projected fleet of war airplanes. The 
railroad was of little use for the purpose for which it 
was built, but in days of peace it will be of untold value 
in developing the resources of the Peninsula, and in 
carrying to and fro those who seek the lake on whose 
wooded shores cottage sites and vacation areas were 
preserved inviolate by the cooperation of the War De- 
partment and the Department of Agriculture. 

But railroad and highway have not yet succeeded in 
reaching to the recesses of the Olympic Peninsula. 
Those who would go into the mysterious cloud-wrapped 
mountains and study the glaciers and the torrents, or 
penetrate to the densest sections of the primeval forest, 
where massive, stately firs are to be found in greatest 
abundance ; where rich, rank undergrowth springs under 
the trees in a manner truly tropical; where the moss 
hangs in festoons from the branches ; where game and 



OLYMPIC WANDERINGS 

fish abound, must take to the upland trails that lead to 
all parts of the national playground. Some of these 
trails are difficult, and some will put to the test all the 
mountain-climber's endurance. But all are fascinat- 
ing, and those who follow them will return with enthu- 
siasm akin to that of the hiker from near-by Port 
Townsend, who told of the impressiveness of standing 
on the mountain slopes and watching the clouds form 
and disappear beneath him: 

From a perfectly clear sky a wisp of cloud would 
come floating over the shoulder of Mount Constance, 
and go winding down the valley, like an advancing 
army. Tributaries would go swirling up the lateral 
divides like skirmish lines from the main body. Eddy- 
ing air currents would beat back the encroaching mists ; 
but, though momentarily checked, the hosts of the sky 
would marshal their columns, force their way to the 
heads of the draws and go tumbling over the crests in 
one seething, billowy mass of obliterating whiteness. 
Here and there some lofty crag or tree top would appear 
above the flood, showing black as night against the back- 
ground of sky and cloud. 



CHAPTER XXX 
ON PUGET SOUND 

PUGET SOUND has been called 'Hhe Mediterra- 
nean of America," but a far better comparison 
was made by John Muir when he likened it to 
Lake Tahoe. And why not ? Why should it be thought 
necessary to go to Europe for a likeness to Washing- 
ton's great waterway when America is able to surpass 
all the scenery of Europe? 

If the Strait of Juan de Fuca be included in the esti- 
mate, as it should be, the area of blue water in the great 
inlet from the Pacific is about two thousand square miles 
— two thousand miles bordered by mighty forests, thriv- 
ing towns and cities and towering mountains ; traversed 
by great ships that pass to and from all nations ; dotted 
with green islands that tempt the camper and the home- 
seeker; and explored by the tireless athlete and the 
sportman in graceful yacht and noisy motor-boat. 

Most people think only of Seattle and Tacoma as 
Puget Sound cities, but there are others that should be 
remembered by those who delight in the picturesque. 
There is Port Angeles, the lumbering center, celebrated 
for the pleasing views afforded there of the wonderful 
sunsets beyond the hills of British Columbia, when the 
Straits are painted in indescribable colors, and of the 
reflection in the rippling waters of the rising moon that 
seems never to be so radiant as above Puget Sound. 
There is Port Townsend, with its immigration station, 
and Anacortes of the salmon canneries, whose founder, 
Amos Bowman, named it Anna Curtis, in honor of his 

268 




M^^»^ 



ON PUGET SOUND 

wife; a town to be remembered with Auburn, farther 
south, which was first called Slaughter, for a naval 
officer, but the coming of the railroad made necessary 
so many repetitions of the unpleasant invitation, ''This 
way to the Slaughter House," that the name was speed- 
ily changed. There is Gray's Harbor, known as Bul- 
finch Harbor until it was decided that the place should 
do honor to Captain Robert Gray, discoverer of the 
harbor, instead of to the owner of the discoverer's ship 
Columbia. There is Bellingham, where electric lights 
glowed when the stumps of great trees still stood in 
the streets; Everett, where ocean steamers dock, and 
Olympia, Washington's capital, the city of oysters, 
wooden ships and comfortable homes. 

But Seattle and Tacoma dominate the Sound. When 
these neighboring cities had but twenty thousand people 
each, Muir wrote that they were "far in the lead of all 
others in the race for supremacy." Then he added, 
''These two are keen, active rivals, to all appearance 
well matched. ' ' 

Both cities have had a strenuous record of conquer- 
ing obstacles, and each has won distinction and deserved 
admiration. The searcher for attractive surroundings 
finds it difficult to choose between them ; Tacoma looks 
out on the Olympics to the West and on the Cascades to 
the East, and boasts miles of parks and perfect roads. 
Seattle has made the most of its waterways and inland 
lakes, and looks serenely from its hills on the country 
that pays it tribute. Tacoma 's people are perhaps more 
conservative, but Seattle 's three hundred thousand are 
ever sighing for more difficulties to conquer. 

Upon both cities Mount Rainier looks down from its 
height of 14,408 feet — not one hundred feet less than 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in continental 
United States ; and from both access is easy to the sum- 
mit sought by so many mountain-lovers. Good roads 
enable the dwellers by the Sound to pass in the automo- 
bile — and within four or five hours — to Paradise Valley, 
above Nisqually glacier. And what a ride of vision 
theirs is ! By an easy grade they go through forests, 
along canyons, by the Nisqually, whose tumultuous 
course from the glacier to the sea is so brief, clear to 
the gate of Mount Rainier National Park. Then across 
winding streams and above the tops of lofty trees, in 
canyons surmounted by switchbacks and other engineer- 
ing triumphs, within sight of leaping waterfalls, to the 
bridge that crosses the Nisqually only a few hundred 
feet below the spot where the waters flow from under 
the ice of the parent glacier. Beyond the bridge the 
rapidly mounting road is so narrow, and the height 
above the canyon is so tremendous, that ascending autos 
are allowed to depart only at specified hours, while 
descending machines cannot begin their remarkable 
course until there is no possibility of encountering an 
opposing machine. At Paradise Valley — the abode of 
flowers in summer, the scene of the great ski contests 
in winter, the point from which majestic views may 
be secured at all seasons — the road gives way to the 
trail, where men and women begin their twelve-hour 
climb to the far-off summit for the vision afforded there, 
a vision of at least one hundred miles in every direction. 
James Bryce, the English author of ' ' The American 
Commonwealth,*' after looking from this summit, de- 
clared that ''the combination of ice scenery with wood- 
land scenery of the grandest type is to be found 
nowhere in the Old World, unless it be in the Hima- 

270 




THE ORIGIN OF A GLACIKR 



ON PUGET SOUND 

layas, and — so far as we know — nowhere else on the 
American Continent/' 

There are almost as many possible approaches to 
the great mountain as there are glaciers radiating from 
its mighty sides. To ascend by any one of these is a 
triumph; each has its own peculiar charm. But the 
greatest triumph of all is reserved for those who fol- 
low the trails that make the circuit of the peaks, passing 
from glacier to glacier, and so discovering one by one 
visions that enrapture and amaze. Those who take the 
arduous journey will be ready to join in the involuntary 
exclamation of the first visitors to the valley of flowers 
above Nisqually glacier. ''What a Paradise I" was the 
tribute — a tribute year after year echoed by the thou- 
sands who pass from the waters of Puget Sound to 
persuade Rainier to yield her secrets. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

' THE JOY OF THE OPEN ROAD 

4 4 "I ^ you folks who live among these moun- 
I 1 tains appreciate your privileges?" a visitor 
-^-^ asked a resident of California, at the begin- 
ning of his own pilgnmage among scenes of over- 
whelming grandeur. 

If he had waited a week or two the query would 
have been unnecessary. For ever>^where he went that 
summer he found travelers bound for the forests, the 
lakes, the mountains. There were men trudging along 
the road, with packs on their backs, smilingly declining 
the offered lift in a passing machine ; they were out for a 
hike, and they could not think of lessening the joys 
of vacation by entering a motor-car. There were women 
on horseback, with their outfit on a led pack-horse ; there 
were whole families in automobiles whose equipment 
was roped to the mudguards, strapped on behind, or 
overflowing from the rear seat where children could be 
distinguished from their miscellaneous surroundings 
only by their gleeful voices. The women and children 
wore garments like those of the men, and they bore 
themselves as naturally in their sensible garb as if it 
was the accustomed dress of every day. Indeed, many 
women wear their outing dress about the house, on 
the ranch, or even sometimes in the market town, if an 
errand calls them there suddenly. 

Clothing is not the only evidence of naturalness and 
comradeship. All who travel the road have a cheerful 
greeting for the passer-by; there is almost invariably 
a wave of the hand and a smile that seems to say, ''Isn't 
this the life?" 

272 







•-3 S 
O 





PACK TKAIN LOADED WITH DOUGLAS FIR IT.ANTS 




GETTING BREAKFAST, BLEWITT PASS HIGHWAY, WENATCHEE NATIONAL 
FOREST, AVASHINGTON 



THE JOY OF THE OPEN ROAD 

These wanderers from home are not all of the leisure 
class, either. Clerks from the city and ranchers from 
the country fish together in the stream or pass one 
another on mountain trails. A Seattle stenographer 
who was brought up amid the more prosaic surround- 
ings of the East cannot now be content unless she has 
her weeks of roughing it in the mountains. "It is so 
good to sleep on pine boughs for a few nights, and to 
wear clothing in which I would not receive callers," 
she said. 

The family of a Portland office worker finds health 
during two months or more of the summer in six acres 
of forest land near the city. There father and mother 
sleep on the ground and all eat daily in the manner 
that more sophisticated people can put up with only for 
a single picnic meal. Some day that man hopes to 
have a rough shack on his land ; but he is content to let 
his lumber season for an unreasonable length of time, 
for he is loth to give up the sleeping-bag under the stars. 
That lumber, by the way, came from a near-by rancher 
who insists on supplying his neighbors from his little 
sawmill, at a price two-thirds that offered by city 
dealers. *'If I should contract mth them," the man 
said, "there would be nothing left for my neighbors. 
Then I never did charge over fourteen dollars a thou- 
sand for lumber, and it is too late to begin now. ' ' 

Ranchers are especially eager to respond to the 
enticing invitations to share in the joys of the out-of- 
doors that are sent broadcast by the Forest Service ; 
they camp with their families by river or lake, perhaps 
moving on after a few days to another desirable spot, 
and they return to the home soil really refreshed. "We 
must go away to-morrow to our ranch two hundred 

18 273 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

miles from here, ' ' said one rural camper whose wife and 
children were with him about the campfire.- ''It is not 
easy to go when the trout are biting as they did to-day ; 
we caught fifty pounds of trout. But the wheat will be 
ready to harvest next week. Be sure we 're coming back 
next year, though; or perhaps we'll go somewhere else, 
to fish, and camp, and get made over new. ' ' 

Everywhere in the West there are public camp 
grounds, provided by individuals or communities, by the 
state or by the Forest Service. Some of these camps 
can accommodate scores; others are intended but for 
one or two families. It is possible to go all the way 
from San Diego to the Canada line, spending every 
night on one of these camp grounds. In many of them 
rude fireplaces are provided, as well as other comforts. 
In the forest camps wood may be gathered freely, and 
in some of them a supply of cut wood is always available. 

' ' Isn 't it wonderful what is done for us by the Forest 
Service ? " a camper remarked. ' ' We have feed for our 
horses, as well as fuel, and we are free to fish in the 
streams and hunt in the mountains, so long as we obey 
the laws of the state. When I wanted information about 
the camping grounds and roads, I applied at the office 
of the Forest Supervisor, and was given a map and full 
information. If necessary, we can use the telephone 
line established for fire protection purposes, and wher- 
ever we go we find cross-road signs and trail directions 
that send us on our way. ' * 

The detail maps of the National Forests given to all 
who ask for them are marvels of accuracy and detail. 
The explanatory legend on the map of Washington's 
Wenatchee Forest, for instance, is quite inclusive: it 
tells of the location of ranger stations where informa- 

274 



THE JOY OF THE OPEN ROAD 

tion can be secured ; of lockout stations where is the 
widest possible view of the surroundings; of wagon 
roads, private roads, trails, telephone instruments, pub- 
lic camping grounds, hotels, sohoolhouses, cabins and 
tool boxes. The entire map is conveniently laid off in 
sections one inch square. Think of going camping with 
such provision for comfort and safety, and in a region 
where there are not only routes for the automobile, but 
practicable trails that lead to wild summits and hidden 
canyons and mountain lakes where the trout bite freely 
because they have not been taught by a horde of fisher- 
men that it is not wise to take flies that look tempting 
but lead only to the sportsman's creel. 

The exclamation of the rancher who thought such 
provision for the vacation-seeker was remarkable was 
repeated to the supervisor of one of the forests. ''No, 
it is not wonderful," he said. ''These forests belong 
to the people. It is our business to tell them of their 
property, to lure them to their heritage— not only to the 
trail or the camp, but to the site for cabin or more pre- 
tentious houses which have been laid out on the shores 
of the lakes, by the stream, or deep in the forests. The 
people are coming. Let them come. For the forests— 
their forests— are calling them; it is our delight to be 
the means by which the call is made known. ' ' 



CHAPTER XXXII 
ACROSS WASHINGTON'S INLAND EMPIRE 

IESS than a century ago men would have laughed 
at the idea of applying to the valley of the 
-^ Columbia the term ''Inland Empire." There 
were few who had a good Avord for the vast area that has 
given to the country one of its most fertile lands. In 
1837 Thomas J. Famham wrote : 

Above the Columbia there is little worth-while land. 
The forests are so heavy and so matted with brambles 
as to require the arm of a Hercules to clear a farm 
of one hundred acres in an ordinary lifetime ; and the 
mass of timber is so great that an attempt to subdue 
it by girdling would result in the production of another 
forest before the ground could be disincumbered of 
what was thus killed. 

Six years later United States Senator McDuffie de- 
clared that he would not give a pinch of snuff for the 
whole Oregon country, of which the present state of 
Washington was a large part. Even as late as 1865 
Captain John MuUan, who wished to encourage emi- 
gration to the valley of the Columbia, found it neces- 
sary to write : 

Though it has pleased many persons, for reasons 
which I am not charitable enough to think were even 
satisfactory to themselves, to term the great plain of 
the Columbia Eiver an immense desert, I am still san- 
guine to believe that in this same plain or so-called 
desert we shall find as rich a wealth as the desert of 
Colorado is now sending forth to the commercial world. 

276 



ACROSS WASHINGTON'S INLAND EMPIRE 

This desert, and the river flowing through it, has been 
favorably compared to the Nile, the enriching influence 
of which has made Egypt the granary of the East since 
the earliest period of men. 

It may be true that there is much waste land in the 
valley of the Columbia, but it is also true that in the 
valley of the Columbia and its tributaries are some of 
the country's most productive orchard lands and grain 
fields. There are valleys of almost boundless fertility, 
like the Yakima, the Wenatchee and the Walla Walla, 
where fortunes are made in raising fruit, though these 
were barren slopes until irrigation brought to them the 
transforming waters ; there is the great wheat plateau 
of the Big Bend country, where the Columbia changes 
its majestic course ; there are the Okanogan Highlands, 
where Indian lands have been thrown open to settle- 
ment in comparatively recent years, where fruits are 
abundant and cattle thrive wonderfully ; and there are 
a dozen other regions which unmistakably give the 
lie to the doleful prophecies of the pessimists of 
past generations. 

Of the four great roads that go to these spots of 
fertility and beauty, perhaps first place should be given 
to the Sunset Highway that leads out of Seattle, over 
the Cascade Mountains, and on to Spokane, by rushing 
rivers and sky-blue lakes, within sight of great cataracts 
and across dry coulees — the beds of water courses that 
have long since disappeared, and through miles of 
orchards whose trees provide the fruit that is to give 
loads to the scores of refrigerator cars to be seen, at 
any time during the long season, waiting on the rail- 
way sidings in towns that may not boast as many houses 
as there are cars. And this in a country of which, in 

277 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

1837, a settler said, ''It is probably not worth half the 
money and time that will be spent in talking about it. ' ' 

A humorist must have had something to do with 
marking the mile posts along an early portion of the 
highway to the country of which these disparaging 
words were spoken. Between Sammamish Lake and 
Falls City the signs on the posts record the fact that the 
distance to Falls City is 7.9 miles, 6.9 miles, 5.9 miles — 
never, by any chance, is the measurement in even miles. 
The use of these unusual figures might be more easily 
understood if the country were unattractive ; then the 
markings would help to distract the traveler's mind. 
But what can be the object when every mile of the coun- 
try is so attractive that there is hardly time to look 
at the signs or to realize that the distance to the next 
town is even worth measuring? 

As if the rugged beauty of the rapidly ascending 
country is not sufficient, the Snoqualmie Eiver unex- 
pectedly calls the traveler a few rods from the road to 
see the mad plunge of its waters over a sheer cliff 268 
feet to the abyss below. With the background of moun- 
tain and the surroundings of vivid green, the foam and 
mist of the falls are most alluring. Fascinated, the 
observer does not find it easy to pass on to the Twin 
Falls in the same river, only a few miles on toward the 
mountains. The rough trail that leads to these falls — 
one of them a tumbling cascade, the other a true fall — 
adds to the pleasure of the downward climb from the 
highway to the edge of the stream that makes its waters 
perform so many gymnastic feats. All too soon will 
come the day when the trail will yield to the cement 
steps that will be demanded by luxury-loving visitors, 
but to-day those who delight to go where improvement 

278 




Copyright, 1915, by Asahel Curtis, Seattle 

SNOQUALMIE FALLS, WASHINGTON 



ACROSS WASHINGTON'S INLAND EMPIRE 

has not yet been made on Nature's provision for safety 
and comfort may still take delight in these upper 
plunges of the Snoqualmie, where power was generated 
for use in building the immense fill for the railroad 
on the heights above the river, one of the greatest 
embankments in the world. 

Beyond Twin Falls is a thick forest where, now and 
again, a blackened trunk is seen among the trees — evi- 
dence that long ago the forest was destroyed and that 
Nature has managed to reclothe the land left naked. 
Yet there are those who say that it is useless to expect 
lands once burned over or cut over to be ready again for 
those who know how to use the forests. Naturally the 
men of the forests have a different vision. 

The road leads on to Snoqualmie Pass, through 
cedars and Douglas firs whose straight, tall tranks make 
imperative the dropping of the automobile top, that 
there may be an uninterrupted look up, up, up to the tree 
tops, and then to the blue sky above. 

Through the trees Granite Mountain appears and 
unlocks the tongue of the Forest Ranger in the machine. 
"Up there I got my first bear," he began. ** Louis and 
I were running lines. I had not wanted to take my six- 
shooter that day, but Louis had insisted, fortunately 
for us both. We suddenly came on Biniin eating 
blackberries. Now you would not like to be interrupted 
at such an occupation. Neither did the bear. He was 
somewhat peevish, but instead of climbing higher, as a 
wounded bear usually does, he cornered toward me 
dowm the mountain side. I gave him another shot, and 
he tried to go for me. I was up hill from him, though, 
and he was not strong enough to climb. So he ambled 
slowly down the hill. For half a mile he struggled. 

279 



SEEING THE PAR WEST 

Then he fell dead, within a few rods of the camp. A 
most accommodating bear, if he was peevish ! He must 
have known that we did not want the task of carrying his 
huge body down the mountain side to the camp." 

Just below the scene of the bear adventure Denny 
Creek Camp Ground makes the traveler wish to antici- 
pate the evening that he may roll up in his sleeping-bag 
on the banks of Denny Creek, in the amphitheater made 
by the towering mountains, from one of which passen- 
gers on the train of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. 
Paul Eailroad can look down, just before they enter 
from the west the tunnel at Snoqualmie Summit. Be- 
tween Snoqualmie Pass and Blewitt Pass lie many 
miles of delightful road through the towering forests, 
by the side of majestic Keechelus Lake, and within sight 
of Kachess and Cle Elum lakes. The side road that 
leads over Blewitt is far from being the almost perfect 
series of easy spirals that led to Snoqualmie Summit, 
but the rugged surroundings of the more easterly and 
higher pass make the greater difficulties of this spot, 
famous since the days of the gold-seekers, seem well 
worth while. A few miles from the pass, within sight 
of the road, a quartz wheel, driven by water power, is 
silent, useless. *'I can't get no one to help me," said 
the proprietor, a typical old-time miner, as his form, 
bent from bearing pick and shovel, disappeared in the 
forest by the roadside. 

It is not long until the road passes from the moun- 
tain into Wenatchee Valley, famous for its apples, on 
to the junction of the river that enriches the valley with 
the Columbia, sweeping down from the north. 

Both sides of the Columbia are so attractive that it 
is difficult to choose whether to go north by the left bank 

280 




^HjJI^ 


ill 


K 


- ^ .K^-: 
»'^.. 





ox LAKE KECHEELUS, WASHINGTO.N 




■f 




IN lAMAN PASS, LAKE CHELAX, W ASHIXGTON 



ACROSS WASHINGTON'S INLAND EMPIRE 

or the right bank. The best way to settle the difficulty- 
is to take both roads in turn and so have the better 
opportunity of studying the varied cliffs that border the 
stream all the way from Wenatchee to the vicinity of 
Lake Chelan. One advantage of choosing the road on 
the right bank for the trip up-stream is the necessity 
of crossing the little Orondo ferry that swings far down 
the river with the strong current, then struggles back to 
the appointed landing place in unexpected recovery. 

From the river the road at last turns into the hills, 
and rapidly ascends by means of a series of switch- 
backs from which there are distant views of the Colum- 
bia, rushing on to the sea as, in the days when Lewis 
and Clark and their pioneering successors eagerly 
fought their way past these strange rock formations. 

A few miles of the uplands leads to the spot where 
wonderful Chelan Lake comes to view in sudden, sur- 
prising splendor. For fifty miles this highland lake 
stretches its sinuous course, first along the low-lying 
hills where the Chelan apples grow, then back into the 
mountains of Chelan Forest, which rise in terraces from 
three to eight or nine thousand feet above the water. 
All the way from Chelan Village to Stehekin the 
steamer cleaves the waters for passengers who exclaim 
until they have no words left, who look in amazement 
at the waters beneath, at the heights above, at the clouds 
in the blue heavens. They think of the Indians who 
declare that once there was a plain where is now the 
lake, and that a great serpent came to destroy their 
peace of mind and kill the game on which they lived. 
In response to their prayer the Great Spirit killed the 
serpent, and raised mountains about his dead body. 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

and covered liim over with water — the waters of ser- 
pent-like Chelan. In some places the lake is but a 
mile wide; in others it is three or four miles broad. 
Sometimes the surrounding mountains seem to make 
an end to it ; then it turns and again stretches far away. 
Finally the mountain walls rise almost like precipices 
live and even six thousand feet above the water. Down 
through clefts in the mountains come streams like Rail- 
road Creek, which descends six thousand feet in twenty 
miles. Above the tributary canyons is wild mountain 
country where snows abide, where glaciers send down 
their icy waters to the lake, where the winding, climbing 
trail lures to wild adventure. 

Lake Chelan is by no means the last of the wonders 
approached by the Sunset Highway. There are still 
valleys and rivers, forests and cascades. And there 
are the coulees, first Moses Coulee, then the greater 
Grand Coulee, thought by many to have been the bed 
of the Columbia when that stream, temporarily filled 
up at the Great Bend, was forced to cut gorges across 
the lava plateau to the south. Alkali lakes are here 
and there in the depths of the chasm, whose lava walls 
rise almost vertically from four hundred to six hun- 
dred feet. 

And all about are the wheat lands where wonderful 
crops are raised, where still greater crops will appear 
when the stupendous plans for the irrigation of this 
section are completely carried out. 

One hundred miles beyond Grand Coulee is Spokane, 
the Queen City of the Inland Empire, which really dates 
back only to 1881, though in 1872 the discovery of the 
Coeur d'Alene mines gave it a sort of start. As far 

282 



ACROSS WASHINGTON'S INLAND EMPIRE 

back as 1812 it was the site of Spokane House, a fur- 
trading post of the Northwest Company. To-day the 
visitor needs only to follow the High Drive and the 
Rim Drive, parts of Spokane's beautiful park system, 
to realize what a change has come to the city built about 
Spokane Falls, and why it will not be surprising to see, 
before the centuiy is old, half a million people liv- 
ing here at this western gateway to Washington's 
Sunset Highway. 



T^ 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

WESTERN HIGHWAYS 

HEBE is a big surprise in store for the motorist 
■ who has delayed taking a road tour through the 
-■- region from the Eocky Mountains to the Pacific 
Coast because he has had the idea that there are few 
good roads, there. The fact is that the West is grid- 
ironed with fine roads. There are many stretches of 
bad road, but it is usually possible to avoid these. And 
the day is not far distant when the spirited campaign 
for good roads will result in highways all the way from 
the mountains to the sea as remarkable for their sur- 
face as for their scenery. 

Ultimately there will be as many of these practicable 
routes as there are transcontinental railroads. All the 
way from the Canadian line to the Mexican border 
these roads have been marked, and sections of them 
have been improved. Among others there are the Dixie 
Highway, the National Old Trails Road, the Pike's 
Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, and the Lincoln High- 
way. Then there are north and south roads innumer- 
able, some of them among the best specimens of highway 
construction to be found anywhere — for instance, the 
first link in the Park-to-Park Highway, opened in the 
summer of 1919, which connects Glacier Park and Yel- 
lowstone Park; and the second link, opened the same 
year, from Yellowstone Park to Rocky Mountain Park. 
Those who have the privilege of traveling over the three 
hundred and eighty miles between Montana 's mountain 
wonderland and the chief of Wyoming's many glories, 
following the main range of the Rocky Mountains, will 

284 




ALONG THE TRUCKEE RIVER ON THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY, NEAR 
LAKE TAHOE, CALIFORNIA 




PINE CANNON ON 



THE SUNSET HIGHWAY, WASHINGTON 




lANTOM CANYON HIGHWAY, CANON CITY, COLORADO 




ROOSEVELT ROAD, ARIZONA 



WESTERN HIGHWAYS 

wait eagerly for the announcement of the completion of 
other links in this tremendous enterprise connecting all 
the National Parks of the mountain region. 

Then there is the Pacific Highway, all the way from 
San Diego to the Canada line, much of this a boulevard, 
while all of it is practicable ; the Olympic Highway, and 
the Sunset Highway. There is the Cody Road, Wyom- 
ing 's stately entrance to Yellowstone Park. There is 
El Camino Sierra, on the coastwise side of the Sierras, 
from Owens Lake, California, to Reno, Nevada. There 
is the Tioga Road from Mono Lake, ''the Dead Sea 
of the West," across the Sierra Nevada Mountains by 
Tioga Pass at an elevation of 9941 feet, through the 
remarkable region between the Yosemite and the Tuo- 
lumne to a junction with the Oak Flat Road that leads 
out of the Yosemite and along the cliffs far above the 
swirling waters of the Merced. There is the Roose- 
velt Dam Road in Arizona and the tremendously impres- 
sive road from Oregon into the redwood forests of 
Northwestern California. There are the marvelous 
roads centering at Denver and Ogden, and Carson City 
and Spokane and Boise City. There are more of these 
than can be named in a brief chapter, and there will 
be many more before this volume is a year old. 

Every one of the states of the Far West is in the 
midst of a campaign of road-building. The Colorado 
Highway Map shows about seven thousand miles of 
roads, all good for automobile travel, while the machine 
can cover almost all of the forty-two thousand miles 
in the state. 

Wyoming is doing her best to care for the section of 
the Lincoln Highway within her bounds, as well as to 
improve other roads. 



SEEING THE FAR WEST 

During 1919 Montana planned to spend on new roads 
nearly seven million dollars and to increase the appro- 
priation from year to year. 

Idaho is developing the Idaho-Montana Highway, 
and is caring for other roads that will open to automo- 
bile travel thousands of square miles of territory that 
have been almost inaccessible. 

For fifteen years Washington has had a highway 
policy, and her program is extensive. In addition to 
the Pacific, Olympic and Sunset Highways, the Highway 
Commission is working on the McClellan Pass High- 
way, the National Park Highway, the Inland Empire 
Highway, and the Central Washington Highway. 

Oregon has constructed many hundred miles of per- 
fect roads, but her program is so large that the things 
already accomplished seem as nothing, though they 
include such marvels as the Columbia Eiver High- 
way and the roads along John Day Eiver and the 
Umpqua Eiver. 

In California, where the highway system is already 
a wonder, large appropriations for new work have been 
made. It is the purpose to give to every county in the 
state highways that will be a source of constant pleas- 
ure to all who use them. Among other projects 
destined to be completed soon is the new road, to be 
open all the year, from the San Joaquin Valley into the 
Yosemite Valley. 

In Arizona, in addition to the Eoosevelt Dam High- 
way, there is the Santa Fe Highway — the name given in 
this state to the Old Trails Highway — which crosses 
the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert, and passes 
near the Cliff Dwellings of Walnut Canyon and the San 

286 



WESTERN HIGHWAYS 

Francisco Peaks; the Borderland Highway, and the 
Grand Canyon-Nogales Highway. 

New Mexico's usable roads connect many of the 
points most worth while, and in a few years the high- 
ways will lead the motorist to all sections of the state. 

Already Utah has made practicable sections of the 
Lincoln Highway across Great Salt Lake Desert and 
through a number of canyons where travel has been 
difficult. These are the final bits necessary to put the 
entire Highw^ay across the state in splendid condition 
for travel. Then comes the north-and-south Arrowhead 
Trail, with its branches leading to the Grand Canyon 
and eastward to the Natural Bridges, connecting with 
the road to Mesa Verde Park in Colorado. 

Nevada has parts of the Lincoln Highway in good 
condition, as well as a number of other roads of real 
scenic grandeur, especially about Carson City and Lake 
Tahoe. But what has been done is looked on only as 
a beginning. 

Those who plan to take journeys to any of these 
states may wish to write to the State Highway Com- 
missioners at the capital city, asking for a state road 
map and for the report of work already accomplished 
and other work planned for the immediate future. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Absaroka Range, 164 

Acoma, New Mexico, pueblo of, 145 

Adamana, Arizona, 123 

Adams, R. D., 103 

Alameda Drive, 231 

Albuquerque, New Mexico, 144 

Alder Gulch, Montana, 166 

Alkali, conquering in Colorado, 57 

Anaconda, Montana, 167 

Anacortes, Washington, 268 

Anaho Island, 196 

Anderson Range, Washington, 264 

Angel's Landing, Zion Canyon, 

Utah, 102 
American Fork, Utah, 93 
American River, Cahfornia, 199 
Ames, OUver and Oakes, 78 
Apache Forest, 124 
Apache Trail, Ariaona, 135 
Arden, Forest of, 216 
Arkansas River, 19, 111 
Arrowroot Dam, Idaho, 184 
Aspen Ridge, Wyoming, 84 
Astoria, Oregon, 181, 186 

Bad Lands, Wyoming, 76 
Bandelier National Monument, 142 
Bandits in Cahfornia, 221 
Bath, a Japanese, 213 
Beacon Rock, Oregon, 260 
Beale, General Edward F., 155 
Bear, adventure with, 257, 279 
Beet sugar country, Utah, 94 
Bend, Oregon, 245, 248, 250, 254 
Bergen Park, Colorado, 44 
Bidwell, John, 193, 199 
Bierstadt, Mount, Colorado, 44 
Big Horn River, Montana, 161 



Big Thompson Canyon, Colorado, 

37,46 
Big Trees, 220, 221, 224, 231, 236 
Billings, Montana, 158, 164 
Bishop, Isabella Bird, 47 
Bisnaga Cactus, 153 
Black Canyon of the Gunnison, 70 
Blewitt Pass, Washington, 280 
Boise, Idaho, 181, 187 
Bonita, Pueblo, 143 
Bonneville, Captain, 21, 87, 181 
Bonneville, Lake, 191 
Botanical Laboratory, 137 
Boulder, Colorado, 36 
Bowles, Samuel, 42, 47, 67, 233 
Bozeman, Montana, 159 
Bridge of the Gods, 259 
Bridger, Fort, 76, 80, 85 
Bridger, James, 80 
Bright Angel TraU, 109 
Brontosaurus, bones of, found, 74 
Bryce, James, 270 
Buchanan, President, 85 
Buffalo: in the Yellowstone, 158; 

in Milk River, 172; at Great Falls, 

174 
Buffalo Bill, 43 

Cable Mountain, Utah, 102 

Cable Railway, Zion Canyon, Utah, 

102 
California Gulch, Colorado, gold 

discovery in, 32 
California, Gulf of, 82 
California, University of, 232 
Camels in the desert, 155 
Camp grounds, public, 206, 274, 280 
Camping out, 272 

291 



INDEX 



Canon City, Colorado, 67 
Canyon Diablo, 126 
Capulin National Monument, 140 
Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh, 89 
Caroline Natural Bridge, Utah, 53 
Carson, Kit, 71, 156 
Carson Sink, Nevada, 196 
Cascade Mountains, 240 
Catalina Island, 227 
Catalina Mountain, Arizona, 136 
Catlin, George, Indian artist, 161 
Cave of the Winds, Colorado, 26 
Cedar Canyon, Utah, 103 
Cedar City, Utah, 94, 102 
Central City, Colorado, 35 
Chaco Canyon National Monument, 

143 
Chaco Indians, 143 
Chalicotheres, skeleton of, found, 73 
Channel Islands, 227 
Chelan Lake, 252, 281 
Chelly, Canyon de, 122 
Cheyenne Canyon, 27 
Cheyenne Moimtain, 20, 28 
Cheyenne, Wyoming, 77 
Chinese market gardeners, 212 
Clark Crows, story of, 219 
Clark, General WilUam, 162 
Cliff dweUings, 49, 54, 98, 122, 143 
Cloud formations, 267 
Coast Range, 240 

Coconino National Forest, 109, 132 
Cody, William F., 43 
Cody Road, Montana, 178 
Coeur d'Alene, Lake, 169 
Collegiate Range, Colorado, 68 
Coloma, California, 199 
Colorado City, Colorado, 25 
Colorado Cliff Dwellers' Asso., 49 
Colorado National Monimient, 69 
Colorado River, 111, 115, 130 
Colorado Springs, Colorado, 21, 22, 

24, 25, 33 
292 



Columbia Gorge, Oregon, 255 

Columbia River, 192, 276, 280, 282 

Como Bluff, Wyoming, 73 

Copper in Montana, 168, 175 

Coronado Beach, California, 202 

Coulees, 277, 282 

" Coulter's Hell," 176 

Cowlitz Prairie, Oregon, 263 

Crane's Prairie, Oregon, 245 

Crater Lake, 241 

Crater Moimd, Arizona, 125 

Creede, Colorado, 71 

Crescent Lake, Washington, 265 

Crinkle, Nym, 22 

Cripple Creek, Colorado, 68 

Cucamonga VaUey, 217 

Cumbres Pass, Colorado, 71 

Custer, General, 162 

Cuyamaca Mountains, 204, 208 

Cuyamaca, Spanish gra^t, 208 

Davis, Jefferson, 156; Mrs. Jeffer- 
son, 166 

Dixie National Forest, 94 

Diablo, Canyon, 126 

Dinosaur, bones of, found, 73, 74, 89 

Dinosaur National Monument, 89 

Dinosaur Peak, 89 

Death Valley, California, 152 

Deer hunting, 250 

Deer in the forest, 236 

Deer Lodge Valley, Montana, 159 

Dellenbaugh, Frederick S., 91 

Denny Creek Camp Ground, Wash- 
ington, 280 

Denver, 17, 22, 24, 35, 39, 40, 42, 66 

Denver, Colorado Canyon andPacific 
Railroad, dream of, 88 

Denver Mountain Park, 43 

Descanso, California, 204 

Deschutes River, 254 

Desert view, California, 207 

Desolation Valley, 198 



INDEX 



Deserts: Red, 81; Escalante, 94; 
Painted, 126; Great American, 
151; Colorado, 152, 154; Mohave, 
152, 154; Death Valley, 152, 154, 
156 

Eagle Canyon, Colorado, 69 

Eagle Creek Canyon, Oregon, 257 ' 

Echo Canyon, Utah, 83 

Edwin Natural Bridge, Utah, 52 

El Cajon Pass, 152 

El Camino Real, 214, 227 

El Capitan, Yosemite, 225 

Electric Peak, Montana, 178 

Elk, 265 

Elk Mountain, 81 

EI Morro National Monument, 147 

Elowah Falls, Oregon, 259 

Elwha River, Washington, 264 

Engineering triumphs, 41, 68, 66, 

68, 69, 71, 72, 78, 84, 119, 172, 254 
Emigrant Trail Marker, 198 
Emigrants, stories of, 80, 183, 184, 

193 
Emigration Canyon, Utah, 85 
Erosion in Wyoming, 82 
Escalante Desert, 94 
Estes Park, 47 
Ensign Peak, Utah, 190 
Everett, Washington, 269 
Everts, Thomas C, 178 

Fair Play, Colorado, 35 

Fallen Leaf Lake, California, 197 

Farnham, Thomas, 276 

Ferry at Orondo, Washington, 281 

Fish Cut, Wyoming, 76 

Fire, forest, Tom Tourist and the, 

206 
Flagstaff, Arizona, 131, 132 
Flathead Indian Reservation, 159 
Fopsil, Wyoming, 76 
Fossils, at Dinosaur Peak, 89 



Forests for the people, 275 
Fort Benton, Montana, 163, 174 
Fort Collins, Colorado, 58 
Fort Ellis, Montana, 161 
Fort HaU, Idaho, 181 
Fort Hall Indian Reservation, 182 
Fort Keogh, Montana, 159 
Fountain Creek, Colorado, 22 
Fremont, John C, 30, 71, 181 
Freighters: in Colorado, 78; in Cali- 
fornia, 198 
Fresno, California, 219 
Funeral Range, 152 

Gallap, New Mexico, 147 

Gallatin Valley, Montana, 159 

Gallinas, Rio, 141 

Garden of AUah, 121 

Garden of the Gods, Colorado, 25 

General Grant Park, 221 

General Sherman Tree, 220 

Georgetown Loop, Colorado, 67 

Gila River, 134 

Glacier National Park, 174 

Glacier Point, Yosemite, 226 

Glenbrook, Nevada, 197 

Glendive, Montana, 158 

Glenwood Springs, Colorado, 69 

Globe, Arizona, 135 

Gold: in Colorado, 32; in Montana, 
166, 167; in Idaho, 188; in Cali- 
fornia, 199 

Gold miner lost in Milk River, 172 

Golden, Colorado, 25, 43 '■ 

Gran Quivira National Monument, 
148 

Grand Canyon of Colorado, 82, 94, 
105, 132 

Grand Coulee, Washington, 282 

Grand Junction, Colorado, 59 

Grand River, 19 

Grand Valley, Colorado, 69 

Granite Mountain, Washington, 279 
293 



INDEX 



Gray'a Peak, Colorado, 42, 67 
Great American Desert, 151 
Great Northern Railroad, 171 
Great Salt Lake, 93, 191 
Great White Throne, Zion Canyon, 

Utah, 101 
Greeley, Colorado, 40 
Greeley, Horace, 36, 40, 47, 51 
Green River, Wyoming, 76, S3, 111 
Greenville, Wyoming, 79 
Gulf of California, 115 
Gull, why sacred in Utah, 190 
Gunnison, Black Canyon of the, 70 

Harriman, Edward, 120, 254 

Helper, Utah, 89 , 

Helena, Montana, 160, 167, 168 

Hell Gate Canyon, 165, 168 

Henry's Lake, Idaho, 182 

Hetch Hetchy Valley, California, 
224 

Hichens, Robert, 121 

Highways: Pike's Peak, Ocean to 
Ocean, 22, 89, 140; Crystal Park, 
27 ; Cheyenne to Denver, 39 ; Lariat 
Trail, 43; Mt. Evans, 44; Rocky 
Mountain Park, 46; Park to Park, 
48, 284; Mesa Verde, 49; Monte- 
zuma, 52; Sky Line Drive, 67; 
Phantom Canyon, 68; Lincoln, 
77, 86, 193, 195, 197; Arrowhead 
Trail, 92; National Old Trails, 
125, 132; Grand Canyon, 132; 
Apache Trail, 135; MuUan Road, 
165; Cody Road, 178; Dixie, 189; 
Inland Empire, fl89; Imperial, 
203, 204; El Camino Real, 214, 
227; Santiago Canyon, 216; Mag- 
nolia Drive, 217; Seventeen-mile 
drive, 230; Alameda Drive, 231; 
Columbia River, 256; Olympic, 
263, 266; Sunset, 277; Chapter on, 
284 
294 



HoUiday, Ben, stagedriver, 77 

Hollywood, California, 214 

Holy Cross, Moimt of the, Colorado, 

69 
Hood River, Oregon, 258 
Hood's Canal, Washington, 263 
Hornaday, William T,, 151, 153 
Hospitality: in Utah, 96; in Cali- 
fornia, 228 
Hudson Bay Company, 256, 260 
Hulburd Grove, California, 204 
Humboldt Lake, Utah, 195 
Humboldt River, Utah, 195 
Hunt, Wilson Price, 181, 186 
Huntingdon Lake, California, 224 
Hurricane Fault, Utah, 95, 103 

Imperial Valley, California, 206, 207 

Indian irrigation, 48, 50, 126,' 134 

Indian legends, 122, 132, 204, 208, 
225, 259, 281 

Indians: and the Garden of the 
Gods, 26; Utes kill Meeker, 39; 
at Glen wood Springs, 69; at Medi- 
cine Bow, 79; on the Mono Trail, 
223; Mohave, 112; Navajo, 126, 
132; Hopi, 130; Havasupai, 132; 
Apache, 135; Papago, 137; Chaco, 
143; Sioux, 161, 162, 170; Sitting 
Bull, 162; Crow, 164, 170, 176; 
Blackfeet, 174; Bannock, 176; 
Cayuse, 189; Klamath and Mo- 
doc, 242; Siwash, 266 

Inspiration Point, Yosemite, 225 

Iron deposits in Utah, 95 

Iron Springs, Utah, 95 

Irrigation: in Colorado, 36, 38, 48, 
58; in Arizona, 134; in Montana, 
158, 172; in Idaho, 184; in Oregon, 
248 

Irving, Washington, 22, 56, 87, 193 

Isleta pueblo, 144 

Ives, Lieutenant, 112 



INDEX 



Jackson, Helen Hunt, 27, 33, 35, 47 

Jackson's Hole, Wyoming, 178 

James, Edwin F., at Pike's Peak, 21 

James' Peak, 21 

Japanese outdoor bath, 213 

Jefferson, Thomas, 171 

John Muir Trail, 223 

Johnston, W. R., 126 

Jordan Valley, Utah, 92 

Juan de Fuca, Strait of, 268 

Julesburg, Colorado, 77 

Kearney Park, Fresno, 220 
Kent, WilUam, 234 
King's Canyon Grade, 197 
King's River Canyon, California. 

222 
Klamath Indian Reservation, 241 
Klamath Lake, 241 

Laguna, New Mexico, pueblo of, 145 
Laguna Mountains, California, 203 
Lajeunesse, Seminoe, 80 
Lahontan, Lake, 196 
La Junta, Colorado, 19 
Lake Chelan, 281 
Lake City, Colorado, 70 
Lancaster, Samuel C, 256 
Land Grant, Las Animas, 31 
Laramie, Fort, 40, 79, 80 
La Ramie, Jacques, 79 
Laramie Range, Wyoming, 78 
Las Animas, Land Grant, 31 
Las Vegas, New Mexico, 140 
Lassen Peak, 235, 241 
Lava flows, 245, 254 
La Verkin Forks, Utah, 95 
Lead carbonates, 33 
Leadville, Colorado, 22, 32, 33, 68 
Le Conte, Joseph, 219 
Lee, Jason, 263 

Legends of Indians, 122, 132, 204, 
208, 225, 259, 281 



Lehi, Utah, 93 

Leland Stanford University, 231 

Lemnon, Mount, Arizona, 136 

Lewis and Clark, 164, 171, 260 

Lewiston, Idaho, 181, 188 

Lily, Ben, hunter, 124 

Little Colorado River, 126 

Lodore Canyon, 90 

Long, Horace J., 52 

Long, Major S. H., 47 

Long's Peak, Colorado, 42, 66 

Lookout Mountain, Colorado, 43 

Lookout from mountain top, 252 

Lookout on Paulina Summit, 247 

Loa Angeles, California, 210 

Los Gatos River, 231 

Lost in Yellowstone Park, 178 

Loveland, Colorado, 46 

Lowe Observatory, 118 

Lucin Cut-off, 193 

Lund, Utah, 92, 94 

McCloud River, 236, 238 
MacDougaU, D. T., 137, 150 
McDufiie, Senator, 276 
McCarthy, Fitz-James, 132 
Mack, Colorado, 89 
Mancos, Colorado, 48 
Manitou, Colorado, 22, 25 
Manuelito, Arizona, 122 
Manzano National Forest, 148 
Maps of the National Forests, 274 
Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, 224 
Marshall, Edward, gold discovery 

of, 199 
Massive, Moimt, Colorado, 68 
Maxwell Land Grant, 31, 139 
Mazama, Mount, 241 
Medicine Bow, 74, 79 
Meeker, Colorado, 39 
Meeker, Nathan Cook, 36 
Merced, California, 220 
Merced Canyon, California, 222 
295 



INDEX 



Mesa Encantada, New Mexico, 146 
Mesa Verde National Park, Colo- 
rado, 91, 104, 139 
Mesonyx, bones of, found, 76 
Meteorite Mountain, Arizona, 125 
Metlaka FaUs, Oregon, 259 
Metolius River, Oregon, 249 
Middle Park, Colorado, 45 
Miles City, Montana, 159, 162 
Milk River, Montana, 171 
Miller, Joaquin,, 132, 242 
Mills, Enos A., 45, 47, 66 
Minarets Mountains, 223 
Missionary, why he was contented, 

129 
Missoula, Montana, 168 
Missouri River, 163, 171 
Modjeska, Madame, 216 
Mohave Indians, 112 
Mono Pass, California, 223 
Montana National Bison Range, 159 
Monterey, California, 230 
Montezuma Castle, National Mon- 
ument, Arizona, 131 
Montezuma National Forest, 50 
Montrose, Colorado, 69 
Monvunental Valley, Utah, 104 
Mora Canyon, New Mexico, 140 
Moro Rock, California, 221 
Mormons, 85, 93, 190 
Moscow, Idaho, 189 
Moses Coulee, Washington, 282 
Mosquitoes in Montana, 173 
Moulton, Louise Chandler, 28 
Mount Adams, 259 
Mount Evans, 43, 44 
Mt. Everts, Yellowstone Park, 178 
Mount Hamilton Observatory, 231 
Mount Hood, 259 
Mt. Jefferson, Oregon, 248 
Mount Rainier, 269 
Mount St. Helens, 259 
Mount Shasta, 202, 235, 238 
296 



Mount Whitney, 221, 270 
Moimtain Uons, escape from, 237 
Muerto, Canyon del, 122 
Muir, John, 107, 175, 219, 224, 226, 

268 
Muir Woods National Monument, 

233 
Mukimtuweap Canyon, 98 
Mule guides the way over La Veta 

Pass, Colorado, 72 
Mullan, Lieutenant John, 165 
Multnomah Falls, Oregon, 260 

Names, fantastic, 26, 83 

National Forests: Pike, 18, 65 
Montezuma, 50; Dixie, 94 
Apache, 124; Coconino, 109, 132 
Manzano, 148; Cabinet, 168 
Targhee, 182; El Dorado, 197 
Cleveland, 103, 216; Angeles, 21& 
216; Monterey, 229; Shasta, 236 
Deschutes, 240; Oregon, 257 
Olympic, 263; Wenatchee, 274 
Chelan, 281 

National Monuments: Rainbow 
Bridge, 55, 91; Colorado, 69; 
Wheeler, 71; Dinosaur, 89; Petri- 
fied Forests, 123; Montezuma 
Castle, 131; Tonto, 136; Capulm, 
140; Bandelier, 142; Chaco Can- 
yon, 143; El Morro, 147; Gran 
Quivira, 148; Papago Saguaro, 
153; Pinnacles, 230; Muir Woods, 
233 

National Parks: Rocky Mountain, 
48; Mesa Verde, 48, 91; Yellow- 
stone, 87, 160, 164, 176; Zion, 94; 
Glacier, 173-175; Sequoia, 220; 
Yosemite, 221, 224; General 
Grant, 221; Crater Lake, 241; 
Mount Rainier, 270 

Natural Bridge National Monu- 
ment, 91 



INDEX 



Natural Bridges of Utah, 51, 91 
Needlea, California, 111, 113, 133 
Newberry Crater, Oregon, 245 
Nisqually Glacier, 270 
Nonnezosche Natural Bridge, 54 
North Park, Colorado, 45 
Nye, Bill, 81 

Oakland, California, 232 

Odell, Lake, Oregon, 243 

Ogden, Utah, 85, 191 

Ogden Canyon, Utah, 192 

Ogden, Peter Skene, 235 

Oil wells in orange groves, 217 

Olympia, Washington, 263 

Olympic Mountains, 265 

Olympic Peninsula, 262 

Oneonta Falls, Oregon, 259 

Oraibi, Arizona, 130 

Oregon Trail, 181 

Orondo ferry, 281 

Otto, John, 69 

Ouray, Colorado, 71 

Ouray, Mount, 68 

Overland Route to Cahfomia, 77 

Overland Stage Line, 77 

Pajaro Valley, Cahfomia, 231 
Panamint Mountains, 152 
Papago Indians, 137 
Papago Saguaro National Monu- 
ment, 153 
Paradise Valley, 270 
Parsons, George W., 154 
Panmoweap Canyon, 97 
Pasadena, California, 215 
Pauhna Lake, Oregon, 246 
Paulina Peak, view from, 247 
Pend Oreille Lake, 169 
Petrified Forests, Arizona, 123 
Phantom Curve, Colorado, 72 
Phoenix, Arizona, 131, 134, 154 
Pike National Forest, 18, 65 



Pike, Zebulon M., 19, 111, 141 
Pike's Peak, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24, 27, 

28, 32, 78 
Pilgrim Creek Nursery, California, 

238 
Pillars of Hercules, Oregon, 260 
Pine Valley, Cahfomia, 206 
Pinnacles National Monument, 230 
Pitman Falls, Cahfomia, 223 
Platte River, 37 
Placerville, Cahfomia, 199 
PocateUo, Idaho, 184, 193 
Pompey's Pillar, 162 
Port Angeles, Washington, 268 
Port Townsend, Washington, 267, 

268 
Portland, Oregon, 260 
PoweU, Major J. W., 90, 109 
Pringle Falls, Oregon, 251 
Prophecies, ambitious: Pueblo, 30; 

Leadville, 34; Denver, 39, 40; 

Sevier Lake Country, 94; Oakland, 

California, 232; San Francisco, 

232; Portland, 260 
Prophecies, mistaken, 22, 34, 56, 86, 

276, 278 
Provo, Utah, 93 
Pueblo, Colorado, 20, 22, 30 
Pueblos: Isleta, 144; Languna, 145; 

Acoma, 145 
Puget Sound, 263, 268 
Pyramid Lake, 196 

Railroads: Cripple Creek Short 
Line, 27; Union Pacific, 41, 76, 78, 
89; Moffat Road, 41; Denver and 
Rio Grande, 59, 72, 88, 89; South- 
em Pacific, 82, 111, 118, 197, 236; 
Los Angeles and Salt Lake, 92, 152; 
Santa F^, 111, 115, 122, 138; Cen- 
tral Pacific, 151, 187, 192, 201; 
Tonopah and Tidewater, 152; 
Northern Pacific, 158, 162; Great 
297 



INDEX 



Northern, 171; Western Pacific, 
194; Chicago, Milwaukee and St. 
Paul, 280 

Raih-oad Creek, Lake Chelan, 282 

Rain in Utah, 92 

Rainbow Bridge National Monu- 
ment, 54, 91 

Rampart Range, 22 

Raton, New Mexico, 138, 139 

Red Buttes, Wyoming, 79 

Red CliflF, Colorado, 69 

Red Cloud Moimtain, Colorado, 70 

Red Desert, Wyoming, 81 

Red River, 19 

Redlands, CaUfornia, 217 

Redondo, California, 211 

Reynolds Yellowstone Park Expe- 
dition, 162 

Riverside, California, 217 

Rocky Mountain National Park, 48 

Rocky Mountain Park, 46 

Rollins Pass, Colorado, 41 

Roosevelt Dam, 136 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 127, 134, 234 

Root, F. A., 77 

Royal Gorge, Colorado, 67 

Ruxton Creek, Colorado, 21 

Sabina Canyon, Arizona, 136 
Sacramento, California, 198, 200, 

201 
Sacramento River, 200 
Sagauche Range, Colorado, 68 
Saguaro Cactus, 137, 153 
St. Vrain Canyon, Colorado, 37, 46 
Salton Sink, California, 82, 115 
Salton Sea, 207 
Salinas, California, 229 
Salt Lake City, Utah, 91, 52, 85, 

190 
Sammamish Lake, Washington, 278 
San Bernardino, California, 217 
San Buenaventura Mission, 227 
298 



San Bernardino Moxmtaina, 162 

San Carlos Mission, 230 

San Diego, California, 202 

San Fernando Mission, 214 

San Francisco, 200, 233 

San Francisco Bay, 232 

San Francisco Mountains, Arizona, 

132 
San Joaquin Canyon, California, 222 
San Jos6, CaUfornia, 231 
San Juan Mountains, Colorado, 48, 

70 
San Juan River, Utah, 91 
San Luis Obispo, California, 229 
San Luis Park, Colorado, 17, 45 
San Xavier del Bac, 136 
Sand Creek chimneys, 243 
Sandia Mountains, New Mexico, 

144 
Sandyoceras described, 73 
Sangre de Cristo Mountain, 22, 139 
Santa Ana, California, 217 
Santa Barbara, California, 228 
Santa Clara, California, 231 
Santa Cruz, California, 231 
Santa F6, New Mexico, 19, 138, 

141 
Santa Monica, Cahfomia, 211 
Santa Monica Mountains, 214 
Santiago Canyon, California, 216 
Santa Cruz River, Arizona, 136 
Sautelle Peak, Idaho, 181 
Sawmill, a modern, 238 
Seattle, 268, 269 

Seminoe Mountains, Wyoming, 79 
Sequoias, 220, 224, 231, 236 
Serra, Junipero, 227, 230 
Seventeen-mile drive, 230 
Sevier River, Utah, 94 
Shavano, Mount, 68 
Sheep grazing in Utah, 95 
Sherman, General W. T., 78 
Sherman, Wyoming, 78 



INDEX 



Shinn, Charles Howard, 228 
Shoshone Falls, Idaho, 184, 185 
Shoshone Mountains, 176 
Sierra Ancha Mountains, 135 
Sierra Nevada Mountains, 194 
Sign posts in the desert, 154 
Silver at Leadville, 33 
Silverton, Colorado, 71 
Sinawawa, Temple of, 101 
Sitting Bull, 162 
Snake dance, origin of the, 130 
Snake River, Idaho, 181 
Snoqualmie Pass, 279 
Snoqualniie Falls, Washington, 278 
Sontag and Evans, bandits, 221 
South Park, Colorado, 45 
Spalding, Dr., 188 
Spanish Peaks, Colorado, 22 
Spokane, Washington, 277, 282 
Spruce Division Railway, 2G6 
Springdale, Utah, 97 
Steamboat Mountain, Utah, 97 
Stehekin, Washington, 252, 281 
Summit Pass, 198 
Sunset Highway, 282 

Table Mountain, Oregon, 259 

Tacoma, 208, 269 

Tahoe, Lake, 197, 198 

Tallac, Mount, 197 

Tamalpais, Mount, 232 

Taos, New Mexico, 139 

Tassajara Hot Springs, California, 

229 
Taylor, Bayard, 24 
Tetons, the, 176, 178 
Thompson Falls, Montana, 168 
Three Forks, head of Missouri River, 

163 
Three Sisters, Oregon, 248 
Timpanogas, Mount, 191 
Toano Mountains, 194 
Tolchaco, Arizona, 126, 129 



Toltec Gorge, Colorado, 72 
Tonto National Monument, 136 
Toquerville, Utah, 95 
Torrence, W. W., 60 
Treaty of 1848, 31 
Triceratops, bones of, 160 
Trinidad, Colorado, 138 
Trout, dinner of, 253 
Truckee River, California, 196 
Tucson, Arizona, 136, 137 
Tungsten ore in Colorado, 36 

Uintah Mountains, Utah, 91 

Uncompahgre Valley, Colorado, 58 
Uncompahgre Peak, Colorado, 70 
Union Colony of Colorado, 38 
University of California, 232 
Utah Lake, 93 
Ute Pass, Colorado, 22, 25, 33 

Vernal, Utah, 89 

Veta Mountains, Colorado, 72 

Viejas, Valley de las, 204 

Virgin River, 114 

Virginia City, Montana, 167 

Visaha, Cahfornia, 220 

Vista House, Oregon, 258 

Wahclella Falls, Oregon, 259 
Walla Walla, Washington, 166 
Walla Walla Valley, Washington, 

277 
Walnut Canyon, Arizona, 131 
Wagon Wliecl Gap, Colorado, 71 
Wasatch Range, Utah, 73, 190 
Water from Bisnaga cactus, 153 
Wawona Point, California, 224 
Weber Canyon, 86, 192 
Wenatchce Valley, 277, 280 
Wethorell, Richard and Albert, 43 
Wheeler National Monument, 71 
Whipple, Lieutenant, 113 
White Canyon, Utah, 91 

290 



INDEX 



Whitecross Mountain, Colorado, 70 

Whitman, Marcus, 183, 189, 263 
Whitney, Mount, 221 
Willamette VaUey, 240, 254 
Williams, Arizona, 107, 132 
Williams Canyon, 26 
Wolves, 265 
WyUe, W. W., 97 



Yellowstone National Park, 87, 160, 

164, 176 
Yellowstone River, 158 
Yosemite Valley, California, 221, 

224 
Young, Brigham, 85, 98, 190 
Ypsilon, Mount, Colorado, 66 
Yuma, Arizona, 115, 133 



Yakima Valley, Washington, 277 Zion National Park, 94 




By courtesy of the United States Forest Service 

NATIONAL FORESTS OF THE WEST 
To identify a forest, refer to map key numbers in following table 



KEY NUMBERS OF NATIONAL FORESTS 

(See Map) 



Arizona. 



California. 



Colorado. 



Apache 

Coconino . . 
Coronado . . 

Crook 

Dixie 

Kaibab 

Prescott . . . 
Sitgreaves . 

Tonto 

Tusayan. . 



California . 
Cleveland . 
Crater. . . 
Eldorado . 

Inyo 

Klamath . 



Modoc 

Mono 

Monterey 

Plumas 

Santa Barbara . 

Sequoia 

Shasta 

Sierra 

Siskiyou 

Stanislaus .... 

Tahoe 

Trinity 



Arapaho 

Battlement. . 
Cochetopa . . 
Colorado . . . 
Durango . . . 
Gunnison . . . 
Hayden .... 
Holy Cross . 

La Sal 

Leadville . . . 
Montezuma . 

Pike 

Rio Grande . 
Routt 



Map key numbers 



3 
3 
3 
3 
4 
4 
3 
3 
3 
3 

5 

5 

5 

6 

5 

5 

5 

5 

5 

5 

5 

5 

5 

5 

5 

5 

6 

5 

5 

5 

2 

2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 
4 
2 
2 
2 
2 
2 



Forest 



5 
13 
14 
24 
28 

6 

8 

7 

1 

17 
6 
18 
17 
9 
13 

1 

5 

4 
11 
15 

7 
16 
14 

3 
12 
16 
10 

8 

2 

10 
14 
20 

9 
23 
16 

7 
13 
27 
17 
22 
18 
24 
11 



301 



KEY NUMBERS OF NATIONAL FORESTS— Continued 



State 


Forest 


Map key numbers 




District 


Forest 


Colorado 


San Isabel 


2 
2 
2 
2 
2 

1 


19 


(Continued) 




25 




15 




Uncompahgre 


21 




White River 


12 


Idaho 


Boise 


6 




Cache 


13 




Caribou 


11 




Challis 


5 




Clearwater 


12 






5 




Idaho 


2 






1 




Lemhi 


8 




Minidoka 


14 




Nez Perce 


14 




Payette 


4 




Pend Orielle 


2 




St. Joe 


11 
3 




Sawtooth 

Selway 


7 
13 




Targhee 

Weiser 


9 
1 






19 




Beartooth 


23 




Beaverhead 


21 




Bitterroot 


15 




Blackfeet 


4 




Cabinet 

Custer 


6 
24 




Deerlodge 


16 




Flathead 


7 




Gallatin 


20 




Helena 


17 




Jefferson 


18 




Kootenai . . . 


3 






8 




Lolo 


10 






22 






9 




Sioux 


25 


Nevada 


Dixie 


24 




Eldorado 


9 




Humboldt .... 


15 









302 



KEY NUMBERS OF NATIONAL FOBESTS— Continued 



State 


Forert 


Map key numbers 


District 


Forest 




Inyo 


^^ 
5 
4 
5 
4 

3 
3 
3 
3 
3 
3 
3 

6 
6 
6 
6 
5 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 

4 
4 

6 
6 
6 


13 


(Continued) 




11 


Nevada 


17 




Tahoe 


8 




Toiyabe 


16 


New Mexico 


Carson . • 


2 




13 




Datil 


10 




Gila 


12 






11 






4 




Santa Fe 


3 




Cascade 


13 




Crater 


17 




Deschutes 


14 






18 




Klamath 


1 




Malheur 


24 




Minam . 


21 




Ochoco 


25 




Oregon 


11 




Santiam 


12 




Siskiyou . 


16 




Siuslaw . ... 


16 




Umatilla 


22 






15 




Wallowa 


20 




Wenaha 


19 




Whitman 


23 


Utah 


Ashley 


19 




Cache 


13 




Dixie 


24 




P'lllmnrp .... 


23 




Fishlake 


22 




La Sal 


27 




Manti 


21 




Minidoka 


14 




Powell 


26 




Sevier 


25 




Uinta 


20 




Wasatch 


18 


Washington 


Chelan 


6 


'Columbia 


9 




' Colville 


3 









KEY NUMBERS OF NATIONAL FORESTS— Con^mwed 



Forest 



Map key numbers 




Washington . . . . 
(Continued) 



Wyoming . 



Kaniksu 

Okganogan . . . 

01}Tnpic 

Rainier 

Snoqualmie . . , 
Washington . . 

Wenaha 

Wenatchee . . . 

Ashley 

Bighorn 

Black Hills... 

Bridger 

Caribou 

Hayden 

Medicine Bow 

Shoshone 

Targhee 

Teton 

Washakie 

Wyoming 




THE NATIONAL PARKS AND NATIONAL MONUMENTS OP THE WEST 
(Since this map was made by the United States Geological Survey, Zion National Park, Utah, has been 
created. See page 98) 



H 15 89 




^* % •-^•* /% '^^W/ ^*'% •.^* /% "'^ 



